II. and Catherine de Medici, had the reputation of a prophet

and a magician. His oracles and prophesyings had a widely diffused fame. See Adeluug's History of Folly, contained in his " Vraiss centuries et prophetie.=5," in which it is asserted that the history of the French Eevolution may be found."
Amongst the G-ermans there were many especially who took the field courageously and with convincing arguments against the belief in witchcraft ; one of the first, Cornelius Laos, priest in Mainz, who set himself determinedly, as it were, against the whole bewitched host, and demonstrated the absurdities of the witch-trials. Seized and imprisoned, he was compelled to recant ; but the moment he was again free he renewed his onslaughts, was again incarcerated, and was again compelled to recant and keep silence, to avoid being himself burnt. He died in 1593.
Johannes Weier, or "Wier, the physician of the Duke of Cleves, wrote very freely and luminously against the witch- persecution. His writings excited violent discussion, and were many times reprinted during his lifetime. " De praes- tigiis daemonum, incantationibus et veneficiis, libri vi.," Basel, 1563. Also the physician Thomas Erast of Basle, in his work "■ De lamiis aeu strigibus," 1577, operated bene- ficially, although he himself declared against Calvin.
As in the seventeenth century the witch-faith had reached its point of culmination, and was become quite universal ; as the devil and the witches were everywhere, in the field as in the house, in the stable and in the church, in the air and on the earth ; as weather and hail, drought and rain, confla- grations and death of cattle, came only from the witches ; as the devil ruled in castles and public offices, m the council, chamber, and, most of all, in the brains of men, so
EyLTGHTE5«^METs^T WAES AGAINST WITCHCEAFT. 189
also did the number of men increase who desired to set bounds to the darkness of this superstition, and to celebrate the triumph of victorious reason. These put forth all their {Strength, and thereby acquired an immortal renown.
Adam Tanner, a Jesuit in Bavaria, counselled the judges to use more circumspection and obtain better evidence in the witch-trials. AYhen he died in the Tyrol, however, Horst says that he was denied burial, because he pro- fessed to have conjured a hairy devil under a glass, but which after his death they discovered to be a flea which he had shut up in a microscope ! Frederick Spee, a Jesuit, dis- played a rare boldness of wisdom, by first turning round upon the rulers, judges, and clergy, and demonstrating from his own experience the barbarity and folly of superstition. He died during the thirty-years' war, and wrote an admi- rable work, under the title, " Cautio criminalis, sive de pro- cessibus contra sagas, liber ad magistratus Germaniae hoc tempore necessarius, tum autem consiliariis principum, in- quisitoribus, advocatis, confessariis reorum, concionatoribus, ceterisque lictu utilis : Eintel. 1637. Autore incerto the- ologo orthodoxo." A year afterwards the same work appeared at Cologne and Frankfort simultaneously, and frequently afterwards. It appeared in G-ermany at Bremen in 1647, as " The Book of Conscience in the Witch- Prosecutions, by Joh. Seifert, Swedish Chaplain."
The excellent Elector of Mainz, Joh. Phillipp, cherished Spec's memory. He says of him that he declared himself the author of that work, with the confession that he owed to the witches the grey hair which he had in the ^^rime of life ; it was caused by his consuming sorrow on account of the number of these victims of superstition which he had led to the stake. Still more revolting, if possible, was the fury against witch-devils in the seventeenth century in France ; the best account of which you find in a book published at Eouen in 1606, — "Discours execrable des sorciers, ensemble leur proces, fait depuis deux ans en divers endroits de la France, etc., par Hen. Baguet, grand juge au comte de Bourgogne." An excellent work, also, is that of Kaude, — " Apologie pour les grand hommes, &ussement Boupsonnes de magie, Paris, 1625."
100 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
The Spanish Jesuit de Eio opposed himself to these wholesome endeavours, and wrote, " Disquisitiones Magic, liv. vi.," and defended the grossest superstition which con- tinued rampant through the whole seventeenth century, flourishing with a deadly luxuriance, so that what war, hunger, and plague, did not destroy, superstition swept away. Kepler, the great astronomer, relates that he was summoned by the Emperor to E-egensburg to give his assist- ance in reforming the calendar, and although he was very unwell, he was suddenly called back again, and obliged to travel amid all danger and with all possible rapidity towards his native country of Wirtemberg, where his poor old mother was in imminent danger of being burnt for a witch. He succeeded, though with great difficulty, in rescuing her from the stake (Monumeutum J. Keplero dedicatum : E-hatisb. 1808).
The two authors who more than all contributed to put an end to the witch-prosecutions were, however, the theologian Balthasar Becker, and the jurist Christ. Thomasius.
At the close of the seventeenth century, Becker advanced the nine propositions which deny the in^uence and active power of spirits over the physical world. His work, " De vaste spessen de volmaaken," — " Strong Food for the Per- fect," 1670, brouglit him at once into suspicion of teaching error. His book, " The Bewitched World," ap- peared first in Dutch, 1691, at Amsterdam ; in G-erman in 1693. It made so great a sensation that in two months four thousand copies were sold. In the Netherlands at that time the witch-prosecutions had ceased, but the clergy op- posed his doctrines with all their might, and defended stoutly the power of the devil and the reality of possession. Becker treated the witch-faith mercilesssly, and challenged the evil demi-god of the Christians, the Devil, formally, to take vengeance on him, if he were able. Becker contended with trenchant weapons of the Cartesian philosophy, and with his less happy Exegesis. But it was not merely his lucid philo- sophical knowledge, it was rather his humane mind, which impelled him to rescue mankind from the degrading mad- ness concerning tlie devil. The impunity which Becker enjoyed from any attempts of the devil in consequence of his challenge was explained thus by his opponents ; that
EErOEMATION AND SCIENCE PUT DO"WI^ WTTCHCBAET. 101
Satan out of cunning abstained from spoiling his game, as lie was in the end the greatest gainer by unbelief. But Becker did not achieve an immediate victory. The Church, schools, consistories, and synods, took up arms against him ; and in 1693 he was deposed from his office, and was classed, on account of his zeal as an anti-diaboliker, amongst deists and atheists.
Christ. Thomasius was enabled as professor of juris- prudence to effect more than his humanely-minded coad- jutor. He succeeded in doing that which Becker could not. His writings, as it regards the witch-prosecutions, are classical. They are the following, — " De crimine magiss dissert., by Joh. Eeichen, 1701," and more extended in German. " Thomasius' s Sliort Theorems on the Crime of Sorcery, with appended actis magicis, by Joh. Eeichen, 1703 ;" " De origine et progressu processus inquisitorii contra sagas, 1712 ;" also German in the same year. The rest of his juridical writings also treat this subject freely, as, " The Business of Jurisprudence, in 8 parts." A num- ber of writings were published by lum, amongst which the following are the most important : — " Joh. Belcher's Dis- criminating AVritings on the Nuisance of the AVitch- Prose- cutions, 1703 ;" the same on the nuisance of Sorcery, 1704 ; " Webster, Trials for Witchcraft, from the Enghsh, 1719 ;" Gott. Wahrlich, " The Uselessness of the so-called Witch- Prosecutions," Halle, 1720 ; Beaumont, " Tract on Spirits, Apparitions, and Witches ;" Ant. Pratorius, " On Sorcery and Sorcerers."
But that which the jurists and the theologians, with all their courage and zeal, with all their understanding and knowledge, were unable to effect by these attacks on superstition, the natural philosophers at leugth achieved. The diligent study of nature, the experiments and dis- coveries of physiology and experimental pliysics, it was which preeminently demonstrated those things to be mere natural phenomena which had been attributed to secret arts or to the devil. The writings of Erxleben, Punke, Fischer, Murhard on Natural History and Physics, Euler's Letters on different subjects of Natural Philosophy, 1792 ; the Great Magazine for the Natural History of Man, Zittau, 1788; iialle's Natural Magic; Martius's Instructions in
192 HisTOKT or MAaic.
Katural Magic, "Wiegleb, Blumenbacli, and numerous pbj- sicians, have finally dissolved the spell of sorcery, and have made superstition innocuous, if they have not utterly and for ever expelled it from the human race.
As we have now become familiar with the historical de- velopment of the witch-prosecutions, and the chief phe- nomena of the same, it is not here the place to enter farther into the theological and philosophical disputes concerning it, nor to take a more particular review of the sects which belong, more or less, to the department of sorcery, as the exorcists and banishers of spirits, the diggers for treasure, and the alchemical gold-makers, the astrological and her- metic mystagogues, — as the Rosicrucians, the casters of na- tivities, the illuminatio and fortune-tellers by cards, the necromancers and minor prophets, etc., which, in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, were the order of the day. In the works of Hauber and Horst the reader will find all these things collected. The latter, in the " Dsemonomagie," gives an enumeration of all the kinds of belief in sorcery both of Christian and heathen people and times. As I pro- pose to take a review of the most distinguished mystics of the Middle Ages so far as they are connected with magic, and of the philosophical magic of the writers of the highest class, the reader may perhaps desire to have, preparatory to this, a sort of bird's-eye view of the prevailing beliefs in sor- cery, as it were in nuce. To this end I cannot better serve the reader than by referring him to the work of Grimm, and to its 27th chapter, entitled " Sorcery." I shall here merely notice a few of such facts as have not been already intro- duced by me on this subject.
We have already spoken of what sorcery means, of its existence and character amongst the ancient nations, — Scythians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Bomans, etc. ; as it appeared amongst the ancient Scandinavians, Germans, and British. We have traced it down through its various modifications, especially through the influence of Christianity, and how it degenerated into devil-worship and witchcraft, with the horrors, scandals, and persecutions which followed, and continued nearly to our own times. Amongst the facts which led to its prevalence, contributed to vary its features, and led to its extinction, may be noticed the following.
THE COOKIXG-'SVITCHES. 193
The earliest antiquity attributed magic pre-eminently to "women. The cause of this lay in outward circumstances. To women, and not to men, were confided the selection and preparation of powerful medicines, even as the prepara- tion of food belonged to them. , To prepare ointments, to weave linen, to heal wounds, seemed best to suit their gentle and soft hands. The art of writing and reading letters was in the most ancient times chiefly committed to women. The unquiet career of the life of man was occupied with war, bunting, agriculture, and mechanical arts. To woman all the facilities for sorcery were furnished by experience. The imaginative power of woman is more ardent and more sus- ceptible than that of man, and from the most remote time, homage was paid an inward and sacred strength and power of divination existing in them, ^"omen were priest- esses and soothsayers ; the German and Scandinavian tradi- tions have handed down to us their names and their fame. According to the different popular opinions they were Xornor and Valor, Yalkyrior and Swan-maidens, with a divine life, or they were sorceresses. ITpon a mixture of all this, of natural, legendary, and imaginary circumstances, are founded the ideas of the Middle Ages regarding witchcraft. Fan- tasy, tradition, the knowledge of ciu'ative means, poverty, and laziness, converted old women into witches ; and the three last circumstances created sorceresses out of shepherdesses and herds-maidens. Christianity modified these ideas, as we have seen.
The witches of Shahspere came together to cook ; but they may be placed together with the ancient prophetesses of the Cimbri. But there are other connecting points between ancient and the modern nations. Salt-springs stand in direct connection with modern witchcraft (see Tacitus, Ann. B. 57). There were imdoubtedly such salt streams at that period in Germany flowing out of mountains in the sacred woods. Their produce was regarded as the imme- diate gift of the present godhead ; the obtaining and distri- bution of this salt was deemed a sacred employment ; pos- sibly sacrifices and popular festivals were connected with it. These wise women or priestesses managed the preparation of the salt ; when the salt pan was placed under their care nrd superintendence, we have a direct connection between tlicoe
YOL. II. O
194j histoey of magic.
Balt-boilirigs and tlie later notions of witchcraft. On certain days of festivity the witches took their station on the hill in the sacred wood, where the salt wells spring forth, with cooking apparatus, spoons, and forks, and their salt-pan glowed in the darkness of night.
It is well known that annually in Grermany there was a general expedition of the witches on the night of the first of May — Walpurgisnacht — that is, at the time of the sacrificial feast of the ancient assembly of the people. On the first of May, through many ages, were held the unsummoned tri- bunals, and on this day were celebrated the merry May- games, — that is, the riding of Summer into the country, which in Denmark occurred on the "Walpurgis day. Such May- games in the ancient Danish and Swedish chronicles are frequently spoken of; they were a great gathering of the nobility for sport. Nobility and royalty frequently took part in them. The young men rode first ; then the May -Earl with two wreaths of flowers on each shoulder ; the rest of the people only with one. Songs were sung ; all the young maidens formed a circle round the May-Earl, and he chose a May-Countess by throwing at her a garland (see Grrimm, 449). The first of May is one of the most distinguished festivals of the heathen. But if we mention two or three witch-feasts, that of Walpurgis, St. John's, and St. Bartho- lomew's days, we are reminded by them of all the prosecu- tions of the Middle Ages. The Danish witch-trials name Yalborg Eve St. Hans' Eve ; and Maria, Besogelsesdag's Eve. The people would not have given up their honourable days of assembly to the witches had not these been in their hereditary possession.
Still more striking is the accordance in the places of meet- ing. The witches proceeded to those places precisely where the ancient popular tribunals were held, or where sacred offerings were made. Their gatherings took place in the meadows, in groves of oak, under the lime-trees, under the oak, by the pear-tree. Iii the boughs of the tree sat the musician whose aid they require for the dance. Sometimes they danced at the place of execution, under the gallows. But most commonly mountains, hills, or the highest points of the country were the places of their rendezvous.
The fame of particular witch-mountains extended itself
WITCH MOUNTAINS OF EUROPE. 395
over whole kingdoms ; and which are named after gods, sacriiices, and ancient tribunals. JN'early all the witch- mountains were mountains of sacrifice, fire hills, salt-hills. The whole of Germany is familiar with the Brocken or Blocksberg. The oldest name of it is Brockersberg ; others write it Brockelsberg and Blockersberg, Blocksbarg. A confession-book of the fifteenth century speaks of the sorceresses who were on the Brockisberg. Huiberg, near Halberstadt,is mentioned as a witch-mountain. InThuringia they went to Horselberg near Eisenach, or to the Inselberg near Smalcalde ; in "Westphalia to Koterberg, near Corvei ; to Wechinstein, — Wedingstein, where Wittekind or Witte lived, near Miuden ; in Swabia, to the Schwarzwald, or to Heuberg near Ballingen ; in Eranconia to Staftelstein near Bamberg. The Swedish rendezvous was called Blokula, and that of Norway Blakalla. The Neapolitan Streghe assembled under a nut-tree in Benevento ; the people call it the Benevento wedding. Exactly on this spot stood the sacred tree of the Longobards ; and thus witchcraft depends clearly on ancient pagan worship. The witch-mountains of Italy are,theBarco diFerrara,the Paterno di Bologna, Spirato della Mirandolo, Tossale di Bergamo. In France the Buy de Dome near Clermont is famous. The Spanish Hechizeras held their dance on the heath near Buraona, in the sands of Seville, in the fields of Cirniegolo. A part of Carpathia between Hungary and Poland is called in Polish Babia gora, — the Old Women's Mountain. The witches succeeded to the dethroned goddesses, and the manner in which it took place was this. When the populace went over to the new faith, there were a few who hung back, and for a long time clung to the ancient belief, and in secret continued to practise their rites. From this state of things, the demonology of the ancients mingled itself imperceptibly with Christianity, and from an union of actuality and imagi- nation arose the representation of the nocturnal flights of witches, in which all the barbarities of ancient paganism were perpetuated. How near to the Greek Diana, or the Jewish Herodias, lay the Frau Holda, — a Celtic Abundia, who was soon herself changed into an Unhold, or unholy thing. This agrees curiously with the tradition that the Thiiringian Horselberg was simultaneously possessed by
196 HISTOET or MAGIC.
Holda and her host, and by the witches. Kiesersberg makes the night-travelling witches proceed to no other place than to Yenusberg — Frau Venus with her train — where there is good eating, dancing, and leaping. These nocturnal women, white mothers, — domincB nocturn(B ; bonne dames ; lamia sive geniciales femina, were originally demoniac, elfish women, who appeared in female shape, and showed kindness to men. Holda, Abundia, to whom a third part of the world is subject, conducts the dances ; and Grrimm attributes the original appearances of the witch-dances to the leaping about of the ignis fatuae, to which may be united their derivation from the heathen May-dances. Burchard von Morin, in his collection of decrees from the beginning of the eleventh century, gives the following lively picture of those meetings. " Et si aliqua femina est, quae se dicat, cum daemonum turba in similitudinem mulierum transformata, certis noctibus equitare super quasdam bestias, et in eorum consortio (dae- monum) annumeratum esse. Quaedam sceleratae mulieres retro post Satanam conversae, daemonum illusionibus se- ductae, credunt se nocturnis horis cum Diana paganorum dea vel cum Herodia et innuoiera multitudine mulierum equitare super quasdam bestias, et multae terrarum spatia intempestae noctis silentio pertransire, ejusque jussio- nibus velut dominae obedire et certis noctibus ad ejus ser- vitium evocari."
Here we have the nocturnal women, good, social ser- vants, who went with the witches on these expeditions, brought good luck, performed various little offices, examined the furniture of tiie house, blessed the children in the cradle ; and still this superstition was totally heathen, for the name of Christ might not be mentioned ; they were not considered de\dlish.
We may quote the following as giving one of the most com- plete descriptions of the proceedings at the witch assemblies: — The devil appears as a handsome young man, wearing feathers, and amorously disposed. AVhen it is too late, the witches first perceive the horse-foot or the goose-foot. He then compels them to renounce God, baptizes them, and gives them a new name, at the same time that he conceals his own. Sometimes he approaches as a mouse, crow, or fly, but soon Oijsumes the human form. After repeated intercourse with
A WITCH-EEVEL. 197
him the Tvitches only receive small presents of money, which, in fact, are only disguised filth. He appoints certain days on which they shall visit him, or he fetches them to nightly feasts which are celebrated in the company of other devils and witches. AYlien the devil fetches them, he sits before them on the staff, fire- shovel, or whatever it be on which they ride. Or he comes on a he-goat on which they mount ; or they travel on horses which rise out of the earth. They find at the place of rendezvous many witches, some of them who have long been dead, and others ladies of station, who are masked. Their paramours, however, are only ser- vants of the chief devil, who, in the shape of a he-goat, with a black man's face, sits solemnly on a tall chair, or on a stone table in the middle of the circle, where all do homage to him by curtseys and kisses. He also appoints witch-queens. Sable candles which burn between the horns of the he-goat light up the unsatisfactory meal. They there relate what mischiefs they have done, and resolve upon fresh ones. If the devil disapproves of their deeds, he chastises them, jifter the meal, which neither satisfies nor nourishes, the dance begins. The musician sits on a tree; hisfiddle is a horse's head ; his pipe is a cudgel or a cat's tail ; in the dance they turn round backwards, and in the morning there are seen in the grass the intersecting traces of the hoofs of cows and goats. "When the dance is over, they flog one another with flails or mangle-rollers ; finally, they burn the great he- goat to ashes, which are distributed among the witches as a means of mischief. A young witch is not at once admitted to the feast and dance, but is set on one side to take care of toads with a white stick. The return home is in the same manner as the going thither. The husband, who all the time has had a piece of wood in bed, in the place of his wife, knows nothing of the aftair. The mischiefs chiefly done by the witches are on the corn and cattle of their neighbours. They milk the cows of others, without ap- proaching them. They stick a knife into an oaken post, hang a string to it, down which the milk flows (see Goethe's Faust in Auerbach's cellar), or they strike an axe into the door-post, and milk out of the axe-handle. Good milk they turn blue or bloody ; if they shake milk it wiU produce no butter, and therefore witches are styled " milk-
198 HisTOTiT or ]VrAGIC.
thieves." BewitcTied milk must be whipped in a pot, or a sickle must be run through it, and everj stroke or cut is felt in the body of the witch.
By striking with their besoms or hooks, by scattering water or pebbles in the air, or by throwing sand towards the sunset, they could occasion storms and hail, dash down the corn and fruits of their neighbours to the earth, or sow devil's ashes over the fields. If they bind together the legs of a white horse, they can heal the broken bones of absent persons. If at a wedding, they turn the key of a lock, and fling the lock into the water, and which is called making a net, or tying a witch knot, so long as that knot remains unfound and untied the married pair are without children. If the witches stick pins into pictures or dolls, they are able to kill men. They are said to dig up the bodies of young children from the churchyard, and cut off their fingers, which they use as instru- ments of witchcraft. Their children by the devils are elfish creatures, and called elves or Holds. These are sometimes butterflies, sometimes humble bees, sometimes caterpillars, or worms. They are called good or bad things — Holds or Holdiken. They injure cattle with them ; conjure them into the stem of a tree ; bury them under the elder-bushes ; and as the caterpillars eat the foliage of the tree, the hearts of those people are troubled of whom the witches think.
Not unfrequently the devil appears in the form of a butterfly, or of an asp. Sometimes the witches offer black cattle to him ; and sometimes also their daughters at their birth. They delight to find themselves together at cross roads ; they can pass in and out of houses through the key-hole. When there are three candles in a room, the witches have power. They hate the ringing of bells. When brought before the tribunal, if they can touch the earth they instantly disappear. They have no power to shed a tear, and when thrown into the water they swim. "Easdem praeterea non posse mergi ne veste quidem degravatas," Pliny, viii. 2. The devil, it is said, pro- mises to bring them an iron bar, so that they may be able to sink, but he brings them only a needle. If the witch can catch the eye of the judge he immediately feels compassion, and never can condemn her.
It is characteristic that all witches, spite of their art and tlie power of the devil, continue in misery and deep poverty.
THE WEATHEE. 199
There is not an instance to be heard of where any one made herself rich by her witchcraft ; and for the loss of heavenly felicity they acquire only the least possible of worldly en- joyment. The witches do evil without reaping any ad- vantage from it, and at the best they can only feel a ma- licious joy. Their intercourse with the devil gives them only half-satisfaction, — a circumstance which throws a light on the whole nature of witchcraft, proving it to be but the work of imagination, and not a reality. It is curious that in a Dalecarlian account, the devil did not occupy the chief seat at the Swedish witch-feasts, but lay under the table bound with a chain. The witches related many things of this chain ; as that when its links wore out then came an angel and soldered them together again.
In Lower Germany the ho?2eysuckle is called Albranke, the witch-snare. Long, running plants and entangled twigs are called witch-scapes, and the people believe that an Alp or witch hard pursued could escape by their means. The idea of the butterfly, like so many others, is derived from the ancient mythology in which it is made an emblem of the soul. The formula which enabled a witch to fly was generally — " Up and away ! Hi ! up aloft, and nowhere stay !" A northern sorcarer took a goat skin and wrapped it round his head, and said, " Let it be foggy and let it be magic !" Their dislike of bells is also heathenish. They call bells yelling sounds. The causing of hail storms and the destruction of crops are equally derived from ancient sources. As good divinities gave a blessing to the crops, and as air-riding Valkyrior scattered from the manes of their horses wholesome dews on the fields below, so did malicious and sorcery- using beings endeavour by their poison to destroy the corn. In the Twelve Tables of the Romans a punishment was decreed for those " qui fruges excantassit, sive alienum segetem perplexerit." "Ehudis adhuc antiquitas credebat, et attrati imbres cantibus et re- pelli" (Seneca). In the eighth and ninth centuries, however, this weather-making was laid to the charge of the wizarda rather than witches. The northern sorcerers proceed precisely in this manner, particularly the Avomen of the Finns. Ogautan had a weather-bag, and when he shook it there burst forth storms and wind, and wherever he turned his face there blew a good wind. There is something beautiful in the nortliera
200 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
saga which says that twenty-seven Yalkyrior ride the air, and when they shake their horses' manes above the deep valleys, hail drops on the bright trees, — the sign of a good year. Thus every day falls morning dew on the earth, from the foaming bit of the horse Krimfari.
Tacitus has shown in what high respect woods and trees were held by the heathen Germans. Probably particular groves and, perhaps, particular trees, were dedicated to the gods. Such a grove might not be entered by the common people; such a tree must not be robbed of its leaves or boughs, and must by no means be cut down, — "Sacrum nemus, nemus castrum," says Tacitus. Particular trees were also dedicated to certain elves, wood and house-spirits. The people, long after their conversion to Christianity, continued to hang lights under certain trees, and to bring small offerings, as even to this day they are yet hung with garlands, and dances take place beneath their boughs. This was called in the prohibitions of the church, " vota ad arbores facere aut ibi candelam se ut quodelibet munus deferre ; arborem colere prohibitum." The Longobards paid honours to theso-calledblood-tree. Amongst the Germans the oak was sacred, and the elder. In Lower Saxony the Sambucus nigra was called Ellhorn, or elf-horn ; and therefore the Ellhorn was sacred to our ancestors.
Grimm, in his appendix, and also in the text of his work on mythology, collected many of the witch formulas. The invocation to the moon, the formula for driving away death and winter, etc. Por ejj;ample : —
" As God be welcome gentle moon, Make thou my money more, and soon."
The elves were often apostrophized, but by Christian names, or with a mixture of them. Various were the wonders ef- fected by magic song. Men were killed or made alive, storms evoked or laid, sicknesses ameliorated or occasioned, mountains opened or closed, bonds burst, wicked spirits summoned : — " By the help of an old woman the evil one was addressed." The dead were called forth from the graves. Swords made sharp or dull by magic ; aiTOWs blessed ; and as locks, doors, etc. opened before spirits, and the nights women passed through closed doors, so both lock and bolt gave way before a magic word. New married
MAGIC HERBS, TEEES, ETC. 201:
people were bewitched. Protecting amulets of tin, glass, wood, bones, herbs, silver and gold, were hung round the neck against the malicious arts of witches. Secret writings and runes were hung round the neck, too, as a protection for cattle and men against fever and plague. " Inscriptiones et ligaturae magicse artis insignia sunt, ad- moneant sacerdotes, non ligaturas ossium vel herbarum cui- quam adhibitas prodesse, sed hsec esse laqueos et insidias autiqui hostes." The gay colours of these amulets remind us of the Yirgilian verse, " Terra tibi hsec primum triplici deversa colore Licia circumdo ;" and " Wecte tribus nodis ternas, Amarylli, collares."
The magic power of stones was known in the Middle Ages : see Marbod's " Liber Lapidum," 1123, aud Albertus Magnus. Magic stones did not come into the hands of poor witches, but their chief strength lay in the gathering and boiling of herbs. The most esteemed herbs for those pur- poses are the betony root, henbane, deadly nightshade, ori- ganum, and anthirrhinum, or female flose, arum, fern, and ground ivy. The cuckoo-flowers were gathered on the first of May in the meadows. Tasting of chervil, it is said, makes any one see double. The sleep-apple, a mossy sort of excres- cence on the wild-rose, or hawthorn, laid under the pillow, will not allow any one to awake till they are taken away. In the Edda it is called Sleep-thorn. Some confound it with the mandrake or Alraun, which is drawn out of the earth by means of a dog. The divining gall-apple of the oak, the misletoe sacred to the Celts, the savin, and vervain, were all consi- dered magical. Often many herbs were boiled together, seven, or nine ; three kinds of wood made bewitched water boil ; and the witch-ointments contain seven herbs.
Amongst the means of defence against witchcraft we have mentioned that of avoiding to look directly at a witch. You must make no answer to a witch ; if you receive any gift from her you must not thank her. It was customary to spit three times before the house of a witch. Bread, salt, and charcoal, are defences against witchcraft. The sign of the cross puts to flight devils and witches ; therefore, on the first May night you see so many crosses on the doors. The sound of bells we have mentioned as hateful to witches.
202 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
SUPEESTITIONS.
GRiiiM, in the appendix to his work, has collected a great multitude of magical practices, opinions, and legends of diffe- rent people and times, under the title of Superstition, from which we extract the following.
In order to discover future events a house-door key is laid in a Bible, or an axe in a wooden bowl, and put in motion while tlie names of suspected persons are named. Probably the revolving wheels of fortune which idle fellows carry about had their origin in divination. As a relic oi judicium casei may be regarded the following : a nian who is suspected of theft is made to eat of a consecrated cheese which will stick in the throat of a guilty person.
Drawing of lots was the most respectable and just mode of divining. A very doubtful matter was elevated by this means above the caprice or passions of men, and was made sacred ; as in the decision of inheritances, the selection of victims of sacrifice, etc. The lot can decide the perplexity of the present, and also extends itself to the future. Confided at first to the hands of the priest or of the judges, it became afterwards the resort of sorcery, and from sors comes sortilegiis, sorcerer. There were two modes. The priest, or the father of the family, cast the lot, and showed how it had fallen, or he held the lots towards the party drawing. The former related to the future, the latter to the arrangement of the present. Tacitus de- scribes the former mode.
A whole host of modes of divination came into Europe through the Greeks and Eomans. But the peculiar customs of the European people, which are not derived from these sources, are the more important. The ancient Poles divined victory from water which taken up in a sieve and without running through, was carried before the army. According to one account, the iS'ormans caused a marvellous banner to advance before their army, from which they could fore- tell victory or defeat. We have already spoken of obtaining a knowledge of the future by the neighing of horses. The superstitious listen at twelve o'clock on Christmas-eve on cross-roads and at land-marks. K they fancy that they hear
POPULAR SUPERSTITIGNS. 203
the clash of swords and the neighing of horses, war will break out the following spring. Maidens will listen at that time at the doors of stables, and if they hear the neighing of a horse a lover will appear before the twenty-fourth of June. Others will sleep in the mangers, in order to discover future things.
The divining by the bones of a goose is similar : especially the breast bones of capons, geese, and ducks. If they are red they betoken a continuous cold ; but if they are white, clear, and transparent, the weather in winter will be tolerable. So also with the Martinmas goose. " Ye good old mothers, I consecrate the breast-bone to you, that you may from it become weather-prophets. The foremost part by the throat betokens the early part of winter ; the hindermost part the end of winter ; the white indicates snow and mild weather, the other great cold."
A ringing in the ears, garrula aiiris, (DofjIBoc, in the right ear was fortunate, — " Absentes tinnitu aurium prsesentire de se receptum est," Plin. The twitchings of eyebrows and of cheeks are prognostic. If you meet an old woman, a woman with flying hair, or, which is the same, with her hair bound loose, it is unlucky. He who meets an old woman early in the morning, he who is obliged to walk behind two old women, is for that day unlucky. If a hunter meet an old woman in the morning, he lies down on the ground and lets her stride over him, in order to avoid the mischief. According to the Swedish superstition, it is unlucky to meet any woman except a courtezan, as, according to Chrysostom, the Tapper og, the unfortunate, indicated Trdpvr), a happy day. With this agrees — " Maiden and priest are bad signs ; a courtezan, a good sign." But wherefore the meeting with a blind or one-eyed man, a lame man or a beggar, should be an ill omen, and a humpbacked man or a leper should be good, does not appear very plain : nor why a walker should be more fortunate to encounter than a rider, or why a water-carrier be unlucky. It is more intelligible why no man would allow a woman to reach him a sword, and that the meeting of two warriors predicted victory according to the Ed da.
Prognostications drawn from the meetings of animals have
204s HISTOBT OF MAGIC.
th^ir origin in the life of hunters and herdsmen. They are founded on appearances of nature and the legendary accounts of the movements of beasts. Still more delicate and com- plete were the auguries founded on the flight of birds. The Grreeks E/Omans had carried this department of soothsaying to great perfection, and the practice and particular instances of it will occur to all our readers. The ancient G-ermans were equally addicted to this species of divination. " "What bird has whispered that in thine ear?" "A little bird has sung that to me," are become popular phrases from this source. Modern Greek and the Servian popular songs are very frequently opened by flying birds, and birds that turn them- selves round in all directions, and hold conversations. We have already spoken of the prophetic note of the cuckoo. It belongs to the omen of success, when the traveller un- expectedly hears its voice in a wood. Birds whose move- n:ents are prophetic are called Way-birds. How early these superstitions found their way amongst the German people is shown by the following. Hermigisel, king of AVarner, as he was riding over the field,' saw a bird sitting on a tree and heard it crow. Being acquainted with language of birds, the king said to his followers that it had foretold his death within fourteen days.
Prophetic ants, and swarms of bees hanging on houses, betoken fire or damage. Their appearance in the camp of Drusus is an historical fact (Pliny, ii. 18). The choice of particular days, or the preference of them, prevailed amongst the Jews, the Greeks, and probably amongst all heathen nations. " Nullus observet," preached Eligius, " quae die domum exeat, vel qua die revertatur, nullus ad inchoandum opus diem vel lunam attendat." The ancient Germans appear to have regarded Wednesday and Saturday as sacred to their chief gods, Woutan and Donor. On the other hand, Wed- nesday and Friday are rejected witch-days. According to tlie Witch-prosecutions the devil appears chiefly on Saturday and Tuesday ; but Monday also was reckoned unlucky to begin anything fresh upon. On Tuesday people should ride out and make marriages. Sunday is a fortunate day.
THE HEALING AET. 205
DISEASES.
The healing art amongst the heathen was half sacerdotal, half magical. Experience and a higher education gave to the priests the knowledge of the healing powers of nature ; and from the sanctity of their office proceeded sentences of blessing full of curative influence. Through the whole of the Middle Ages, we see the clergy especially in possession of medicines and the gift of using them. But a part of thnt pagan teaching passed over to the " knowing men and women," who, through the retention of superstitious cus- toms and abuses, actually gave to sorcery the reputation of a curative art. Both witchcraft and medicine fell to the share of women, and from the same causes. A physician was called in the Gothic, Lekeis ; in Anglo-Saxon, Lanen ; in the old Norse, Laknir; in Swedish, Lakare. The English Leech is degraded to a quack amongst the peasantry, or a cattle- doctor. Lachenare, Lachenarinne, express Sorcerer and Sorceress. One of the Scandinavian Asinor was considered the most experienced of doctresses. Amongst the people there are still old women who practise forms of invocation, strokino-, sprinkling, and blessing. It is remarkable that the healing formulas are said only to take effect from men upon women, and from women upon men. There are shepherds who are said to have a preeminent faculty for healing ; and formerly this was the case amongst herdsmen and hunters.
Demi-goddesses, wise women, were possessed of the power of healing. Crescentia received the gift of curing all dis- eases ; according to the old French poem (Meon, n. ii. 2, 71, 73) merely the leprosy. The queens of antiquity were said to have the power of curing certain diseases by the touch. In Eother, 32 f, 33 a, the queen stroked the lame and the crooked with a stone. The kings of France and England, are said to possess a similar power. If a woman has seven sons in succession, the seventh is believed to be able with a blow of his hand to heal all injuries. According to Ettner's midwife, he can cure goitre by the touch.
Christianity considers disease to be a dispensation of God ; heathenism treated it as the work of spirits, and it was thus regarded as something elfish. Of course, tlie
206 HISTOEY OF MAGIC.
diseases of animals were also the effect of spirits. In the fourth formula Stesso with his nine young ones is adjured to come out of the flesh and skin^of the lame horse. Hydro- phobia is said to be owing to a worm under the tongue of dogs, and that the worm may be extracted. A disease of horses is called the blowing worm, which reminds us of the blowing Hold. According to the popular f^uth a witch can conjure its Hold or Elf into men as well as beasts.
Amongst the multitude of superstitious means of cure, the following are striking. It was a most ancient custom to measure the sick, partly for the purpose of cure, and partly to ascertain whether the disease increased or de- creased ; and we find in both books of Kings that Elijah and Elisha measured themselves upon the lifeless bodies of the children, and that by that means the life returned into them.
Next to the water-drawing and sprinkling of the knowing woman is the blessing the door-sill of a house with the stroke of an axe. But another mode of healing was of letting the children or cattle pass through a hollow scooped in the earth, or through the opening of a cleft tree. This it was supposed cast out ail witchcraft, or to annihilate it, or to cure sympa- thetically. If a child did not willingly learn to walk, it waa made to creep through the long withes of the blackberry-bush which were grown down to the earth. Sick sheep were passed through the cleft of a young oak. This slipping through the cleft of the oak, or through the earth, seems to have been with the view of transferring the disease to the genius of the tree or the earth : but it is not related what were the dis- eases thus cured. In the last century the English peasantry cured ruptures in this manner. Diseases and means of cure were also buried in the earth, and especially in the nests of ants. To this mode belongs the cure of epilepsy in the tenth century by a buried peach-blossom, as Eatherius relates in- credulously.
This transference of the disease to the tree, or rather to the spirit which lived in it, is curious. Amongst the forms of adjuration, we find the commencement thus : — " Twig, I bind thee ; fever, now leave me." Westendorp relates the following Netherlands practice: — Whoever has the ague, let him go early in the morning to an old willow tree,
SYMPATHETIC SUPEESTITIONS. 207
tie three knots in a branch, and say, " Good morning, old one ! I give thee the cold ; good morning, old one!" He must then turn round quickly, and run off as fast as he can without looking behind him. The gout must be handed over to an old pine tree. A number of sympa- thetic means either heal or do more mischief. Thus the jaundice becomes incurable if a yellow- legged hen flies over the patient, but is cured by looking into black cart-grease. Spanning over a can or a bowl brings out spasms of the heart. Twisting a willow cures a twisted neck or cuts in the body. To cure St. Anthony's Fire you must strike sparks over it. Break a loaf of bread over the heads of children that learn to speak with difficulty ; a tooth that is pulled must be stuck into the bark of a young tree. There are abundance of such means against hiccup, ear-ache, tooth- ache, etc. Great virtues are attributed to springs of water, especially to such as have been blessed by a saint.
SYMPATHETIC SUPEESTITIOJN".
"When w'omen boil yarn, they must tell a lie at the same time, otherwise it will not get white.
Parents must not buy their children any rattles, nor allow any to be given them, or they will be slow at learning, and will speak with difficulty.
"When you take straw for a hen's nest out of a marriage bed, you must take it from the man's side if you want cock chickens, and from the wife's if you want hen chickens.
No one must on any account weigh an empty cradle, or he will weigh the child's rest away.
The nails on the hands of an infant must be bitten off by the mother the first time, or it wdl learn to steal.
If you wish a child to become a hundred years old, you must get it godfathers out of three different parishes.
If you let a child look into a looking-glass before it is a year old, it will become proud.
Children that cry at christening, will die soon.
Let a mother go three Suncays successively out of the church in silence, and blow each time into the mouth of her child, and it will get its teeth easy.
208 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
Let the father immediately after the christening give the child a sword in its hand, and it will become brave.
Blue cornflowers gathered on Corpus- Christi Sunday- stop the bleeding of the nose if they are held in the hand till they are warm.
A woman can cure her ear-ache by binding a man's stocking round her head.
Elder planted before the stable door preserves the cattle from witchcraft.
He who carries about him a cord with which a rupture doctor has bound up a rupture, may lift the heaviest weight without any danger.
A piece of wood out of a coffin that has been dug up, when laid in a cabbage bed defends it from caterpillars.
One should not lean over a cradle where a child is sleep- ing, nor should it be left standing open. , Splinters from an oak split by lightning cure tooth-ache.
He who will sow seed, let him be careful not to lay it on a table, otherwise it will not grow.
He who has the hiccup, let him plunge a naked knife into a can of beer, and take a good draught of it at one breath.
He who cannot sleep, be it child or adult, let him lay a composing whisp under his pillow ; that is, straw which work- women put under the burdens on their backs ; but it must be taken from the people unknown to them.
In brewing, lay a bunch of nettles in the barrel ; it is then safe against thunder.
A wife who has a cold must sneeze into her husband's shoe.
It is not good to strike a beast with a switch which has been used to correct a child.
Chastise neither man nor beast with a peeled stick, for whatever is beaten with it will dry up.
When you place your shoes reversed at the head of your bed, the nightmare cannot oppress you.
Old women often cut a turf of a foot long which their enemy has lately trodden on, and hang it up in the chimney, and their enemy must wither away.
Let any one who has great anxiety, touch the great toe of a dead person, and he will at once become free from it. ,^ If any one dies in the house, you must shake the bee-
SYMPATHETIC CUBES. 209
hives, and the wine and vinegar, or the bees, the wine and the vinegar, will all go off or spoil.
The first medicine which a lying-in woman takes, should be out of her husband's spoon ; it will then be more efficacious.
During the pains of child-birth, it does good to turn the slippers of the husband round.
Three grains of salt in a measure of milk preserves it from witchcraft.
No one must taste the first warm beer which is given to a lying-in woman ; it must be tried with the finger, other- wise the woman will be attacked with colic.
If a child has the red-gum, take a piece of wood from a miU-wheel, burn it, and smoke the child's swaddling-clothes therewith ; then wash the child with water that flows from the wheel. The wood that remains must be cast into running water.
You should never wean a child while trees are in blossom ; otherwise it will have grey hair.
Three buttons bound together with a thread, and laid in a coffin, will free from warts.
If any one has received a bodily hurt, wash him with brook-water while the bell is tolling for a funeral.
Plantain laid under the feet removes weariness.
He who carries a wolf's heart with him, will not be devoured by the wolf.
To cure the weakness of children, let their water be received into a vessel in which is laid the egg of a coal-black hen, which has been bought without handling, and in which nine holes are pierced. The vessel must then be wrapped in linen, and placed in an ant's nest which has been found without seeking for, and that after sunset. Whoever finds this vessel let him take care not to use it, otherwise he will receive the buried weakness.
If a child fall off in its health, bind a thread of red-silk about its neck ; then catch a mouse, draw a thread of the same silk through its skin across the back-bone, and let it run away. As the mouse wastes away, the child will improve.
When an old woman blesses and prays the spasms of the chest, she breathes crosswise on the afiected part, applies a poultice of salt and barley meal to it, and pro-
VOL. II. P
210 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
nounces — " Spasm and throe, I bid tliee go ; away from the rib, as Christ from the crib." If the patient is seized with the cramp, he must stretch himself on a pbim-tree, and say — " Climbing plant stand, plum-tree waver."
There are people who, through the muttering of a formula, are able to stop a horso in full gallop, to make a watch-dog silent, to stanch blood, and to drive back fire, so that it consumes itself.
In sowing peas, take before the sun goes down some of the peas in your mouth, keep them there in silence while you are sowing the rest, and this will preserve them from sparrows.
The oak is a prophetic tree. A fly in the gall-nut fore- tells war ; a maggot, dearness ; a spider, pestilence.
A piece of oak rubbed in silence on the body on St. John's Day, before the sun rise, heals all open wounds.
He who has warts, let him take a great house-snail, and nail it on the door-post, and as the snail dries up, the wart will dry up too.
A bunch of wild thyme and origanum laid by the milk, prevents its being spoiled by thunder.
Moles are cured on the face by touching them with a dead man's hand ; but the hand must be kept there till it becomes warm.
B-ain water that stands on a tomb-stone will take away freckles.
A horse may be lamed by driving a nail into the recent print of his foot.
If a hen wants to set, make her nest of straw out of the bed of husband or wife.
He who has ague, let him go without speaking, or crossing water, to a lofty willow, make a gash in it, breathe three ti^nes into it, close it quickly, and hasten away without looking back, and the ague will be gone.
Young lilies of the valley gathered before sunrise, and rubbed over the face, take away freckles.
The women hang a kind of root on the cows to drive gadflies nnd maggots, and have extraordinary superstitions concerning this.*
* The author has omitted the well-known practice in the middle ages of anointing the sword which had .wounded any one, instead of the
SPASMS. 211
Those spasms wliicli were ^Yit^essed so frequently in the witch-trials are in all respects very like those to which people are prone in general ; nay, they may even become epidemic and contagious. They were common amongst the Erahmins and the deliverers of oracles ; in the St. Yitus's Dance, and in lunacy ; and the visions connected with them shaped themselves according to the individual circumstances and tlie activity of the imagination. There frequently is a chest spasm connected with a clairvoyant state, and out of this arises what is called the alp, or nightmare. Some kind of a beast, or monster, a giant or cobold, comes and lays itself on the chest, in which the circulation stops, and the action of the muscles is paralysed, so that the sufferer cannot move a limb. In • those who are attacked by nightmare, which often occurs in youth from a too full or weak stomach, there are frequently violent attacks of cramp, and after the attack swellings, or blue spots, or bloody marks, even in particular places. The congestion of blood in the part, with severe spasmodic pressure of the same, occasions an anxious feeling, and a pain which can. be felt long after tlie attack and the vision connected with it have disappeared.
" Thus, some one saw that a spirit seized him ; and after this had vanished, he felt in the part which it had seized
wound itself. From these notions no doubt comes the drinking pro- verb of taking a hair of tlie dog that bit him ; that is, the following morning taking a dram of the liquor which made him drunk. The common practice of children in the country, when they have nettled themselves, taking a dock-leaf and rubbing the place with it, repeating all the time — " Nettle go out, dock go in," is a remains of the superstition of sympathetic cures, and the mummery of formulas during the process, especially of the belief that you might transfer yom* complaints to trees and plants ; such as the instance recorded above of giving your ague to an old willow — " Good morning old one, etc."
The peasantry of Germany, particularly in the Catholic districts, have full faith in these superstitions. The reader may find numerous formulas for such cures in a book sold on all stalls at German fairs called '• Romanen Biichein." Tliis book teaches that Abracadabra, written on a strip of paper and kept in your waistcoat pocket, will defend you against wounds or stabs, and also, if you should find your house on fire, you have only to throiv this paper into it, and the fire will be extinguished. See Howitt's " Kural and Social Life of Germany." — Translator.
212 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
a severe pain for several days. In other persons this" part was actually swollen. It is not to be wondered at that no one can persuade such persons out of the belief in ap- paritions, as they cannot otherwise account for the fixed pain and swelliDg. Experience shows, too, that men in severe frights swell over the whole body. In those spectral visions terror fixes the pain and swelling in the part on which the spectre seems to seize."
A very orthodox, but at the same time very enlightened Catholic clergyman, L. Phil. Ed. Lillbopp, in his work on the Miracles of Christianity, and their relation to animal magnetism, sweeps away the darkness from this subject and from that which prevailed in the witch-times, with a few strokes of his pen, and lets in the light of reason and of tried experience.
Another phenomenon of magic was insensibility to all external stimulants, which was sometimes observed, and was attributed to the devil. We have already seen that in the rigid spasm, in madness and in convulsions, that was by no means unfrequent, and which is not difficult to conceive in the full negation of the external polarity of the senses.
In Paris, not many years ago, a clairvoyant prescribed in her sleep the amputation of her own diseased breast, and when this was afterwards done during her mesmeric sleep she was extremely astonished that she had not in the least per- ceived it.* Such a temporary loss of feeling I have myself often witnessed. I was able shortly after a dislocation of
the thigh to convey the maguetic-sleeping Miss H
in a carriage, for more than ninety miles in two days, during the greater part of which time she slept. This clairvoyant placed a burning moxa on the chest and another on the hip of a magnetic patient during sleep, and she felt nothiiag of it. In modern times total insensibility to pain has been observed under the most violent torture ; but this has not been attributed to supernatural agency, as in former ages.
Horst relates that a merchant named Lohnig, from Silesia, under the government of the Emperor Paul, was condemned to a hundred and fifty severe blows of the knout. At the bame time another person was condemned to thirty, and a
* An eminent physician in London assured us that he had witnessed an exactly similar case in a lady on Denmark-hill,
IT^^SENSIBILITT TO BODILY SUrrEET:S"G. 213
thirl to fifty. LoHnig saw the first die before him, and the next kicked away. "When it came to his turn, he imme- diately under the stroke of the knout became insensible to all feeling. He received the whole number of his blows ; both nostrils were torn open, and the brow scarred ; yet Lohnig, according to his positive assurance, had felt nothing of all this. Heim, in the " Archives of Practical Medicine," relates many cases of the temporary loss of consciousness and feeling in otherwise healthy individuals. Amongst others, a soldier received fifty strokes of a stick from a subaltern otticer, which he sustained without a sign of pain, and without moving. After the chastisement, he said to the commanding oflScer that he begged pardon for sleeping in his presence. Horst relates a similar but still more striking case. There have been men who could voluntarily throw themselves into a state of catalepsy, and of external insensibility; as, for instance, the celebrated Cardanus. Many such perfectly credible facts are related of the saints, especially when at the stake.
St. Augustine relates (De civitate Dei, 1. xiv. c. 24) : There was a priest, of the name of Eestitutus, in Calama, who according to his pleasure, when he imitated a tone of pain, thus withdrew himself from the senses, and lay like one dead, so that he neither felt pinches nor pricks ; and even was once burnt with fire without any sensation or consequent wound. No breathing was observed in him ; and he himself declared that he only heard the loudest voices as if they came from a distance. When in the year 1461 the Hussites fell under great persecution, a very pious man of superior rank at Prague was put upon the rack. Immediately that he was bound on the frame, he became insensible to all pain and as one dead, so that the execu- tioner believing him so, threw him aside on the ground. After some time coming to himself, he wondered that his sides, his hands, and feet Avere so painful ; and it was only when he had noticed the weals, the marks of stabs, and the blood-blisters on his body, and saw the instruments of his execution, that he was aware what had happened. He then related a beautiful dream which he had had during the time of the torture. He was led into a lovely meadow, in the midst of which there was a tree with abundance of splendid
21-i HISTOET or MAGIC.
fruit. There were upon this tree a variety of birds ; and there was seen a youth who kept them in order with a switch, so that none of them ventured to fly away. He also saw three men, who looked at this tree ; and it was very remarkable that the year following, three men, who resembled those seen in the vision, were promoted to be princes in the church."
Now as to those matters and instruments which come out of > arious parts of the bodies of witches, there have also been in our times similar phenomena. But the hocus in these recent cases has been too palpable to need any super- natural agency to explain them. These matters, spite of appearances, or of any presumed acts of the devil, have neither grown in the body, nor are introduced into it by any miracle. Jugglers swallow stones and glass, knives and forks, and throw up such things at pleasure, as one not long ago in America did to the astonishment of all who saw him, but in the end died of it, and was found with a whole heap of such things in his stomach. In lunacy and in spasms, people swallow, frequently, anything that they can lay hands on ; others swallow pins and needles, and probably stick them into their flesh ; and it happens, by no means unfre- quently, that the sick, in order to draw the pity or attention of others towards them, play an heroic part, and aftect a great virtue in pains and sufferings, in weaknesses and tor- tures. This errare humanvm, or hobby, may be the eflect of a whim ; but it may sometimes be, as history teaches, the consequence of a selfish imposture. Wholly impure designs are frequently concealed behind the veil, and pins and needles are often the very natural means of producing swellings. A celebrated and circumspect physician, some years ago, at Copenhagen, saw for a long time a number of needles come out of the body of a patient, and even helped to extract them, till he perceived the trickery, not through acute observation, but merely by chance. They are precisely needles and pins which have always created such astonishment. "Wier relates, on the authority of J. "Rufus, that a maid who was possessed in Constance, after violent pains in the intestines, gave forth a number of such things. " Famulam cujusdam civis a dsDmonio compressam, eique tandem per poenitentiam
PINS AND NEEDLES. 215
valedixisse, ac postea tantos in utero sensisse crutialus, ut in singulas fere horas infantem se crederat exixuram : inde clavos ferreos, ligna, vitra coDipanta, lapides, ossa et hujus- modi ex matriee excrevisse." People found but little sorcery in the hairs, the egg-shells, the yarn, even in the glass aiid stones, which made their appearance by unknown ways. Tie devil seems to have attained h^s object better with his pins and needles. In short, these things with women are diiS- cult to trace to the bottom, but with pins and needles they are thoroughly at home. Yet in the very times of witch- craft we find these things explained in a similar manner, as a passage in Horst shows : — " Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum et male- ficiorum, Eomae, 1671." It is there said : — " Et adeo si perquirentur singulorum lecti, prsecipue ex pluma confecti, nee mirum quod quan deque reperiantur acus, nam ubi sunt mulieres, acus ubique abundant et facile est, quod per acci- dens spatio alicujus temporis multae acus in predictis mobi- libus introcludantur. Neque forsan ab re est considerare, dsemonem aliquando talia supponere potuisse absque parti- tione, ut inde credantur maleiicium commissum et sic aliqua persona indebite damnum patiatur, quemadmodum videmus in actu exorcismi nonnullorum obsessorum, qui videntur evomere acus, clavos et di versa involucra, quae tamen impos- sibile et obsesses in corpore habere, prout non habent, etc. Ex quibus patet quam circumspectus esse debet judex cii'cus hujusmodi reperta, cum de facili, vel potnerint sup- poni, vel esse naturalia, vel [he adds in favour of his own times] facta opera daemonis sive alicujus miuisterio."
There were in tlie middle ages other kindred phenomena, which had their foundation in religious fanaticism. To these belong the ecstasies and convulsions in the churchyard of St. Medard at Paris, where at the grave of the Deacon of Paris people had the most violent convulsions and visions, which to all appearance were very like the possessions of ancient times. They are said to have continued per- fectly insensible to, and uninjured by, stabs and blows with pointed poles and iron bars, and under the crush of the heaviest weights which were thrown upon them. The com- munity of spirits and of visions was also plentifully there.
216 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
The Phrygian prophets and the Montanists exhibited many phenomena resembling these convulsions, to w^hich Irenaeus and TertuUian had nothing to object. But never were the convulsions and the excitement more horrible than amongst the Flagellants, and in the Dancing-mania, a disease in the middle ages, which Hecker describes. See " The Danciug- mania; a Popular Disease," 1832.
The Society of Plagellants appeared in Italy in the thirteenth century. The disease first attacked the inhabi- tants of Perugia, and, finally, nearly all the people of Italy. After crimes and abominations had disgraced Italy, a great repentance and fear of Christ fell upon them ; and the noble and the commoner, the young and the old, even children of five years of age, ran through the streets naked with whips and leathern straps, with which, amid sighs and wee} iig, they chastised themselves on the shoulders till the blood flowed, and they cried aloud for mercy. Even in the night, too, they went about by ten thousand at a time, with torches, and with priests and banners. This frenzy, however, became far more extensive in the middle of the fourteenth century in consequence of the Black Death. The scourges of the Brothers of the Cross in Westphalia were sticks with loose-hanging thongs, at the end of each of which were iron prickles, with which they chastised themselves till their bodies were green and blue. In 1374 there were seen in Aix-la-Chapelle troops of men and women, out of Germany, who, hand in hand, and in a state of perfect insanity, danced furiously for whole hours together, till they fell down exhausted. Then they complained of great oppression, and groaned, till people laced up the lower parts of their bodies, and pressed them together by blows of the fists and by treading on them. Some said that they saw in their convulsions the heavens open ; then followed spasms, and epileptic con- vulsions and fearful racking of the limbs, and those who were accidentally present became infected by them, so that they were irresistibly compelled to join them. For two hundred years examples of their dancings continued. The history of the St. Vitus' s dance and its contagiousness is better known.
Tholuck gives the following facts concerning the sect of
LAUGHIirChriTS. 217
Jumpers or Springers who arose in America in 1760. (See Tholuck's Miscellaneous Writings,Th. i. p. 91.) "Theirdivine service was accompanied by the most wonderfully convulsive gestures ; and still in the religious assemblages of the Me- thodists there, which are held in the open air, that is, at their camp-meetings, the convulsions and violent spasms, under the name of jerkings, are by no means uncommon. The remarkable epidemic laughing-mood is also of this kind, which sometimes attacks them in their public services. Women have often been known to laugh for two days together, and to be so attacked by the devil that they could not resist. "Wesley, their founder, was attacked by this laughing epi- demic on a Sunday fourteen years before, as he was walking with his brother in a meadow, and while they were singing religious hymns. Spite of their endeavours, neither of them could give over, and they were obliged to go home. Poor
L created a particularly great sensation ; and they
knew very well that she did not feign. Kever, he says, had he seen any one who was so terribly dragged hither and thither by the evil one. Now she laughed aloud so that she was nearly suffocated ; now she broke forth in cursing and blaspheming the name of God : then she stamped on the ground with such extraordinary strength that four or five people were not able to hold her. She was like one possessed. Finally, with a feeble voice, she called on Christ for help, and the violence of the paroxysm ceased. Because these paroxysms expressed themselves in laughter, they con- sidered them to be the work of the devil.
Of the same kind were those magical occurrences amongst the children in the orphan-houses at Amsterdam and Horn, which may be compared perfectly to the effect on the children at Mora. The Netherland historian, P. C. Hooft, relates that, in the year 1566, the children in the orphan- houses at Amsterdam were so horribly tormented that it was enough to make any one's hair stand on end. Many children possessed by devils were not only so severely tortured that after their release the effects continued to cling to them through their Hves, but they also climbed like cats up the walls and over the roofs, and made such horrible faces that the most
218 niSTOET OF MAGIC.
courageous men were terrified at them. They could speak foreign languages, and related things which took place at the same moment in other places, even in the courts of justice. They made such extraordinary movements in particular before the houses of certain women, that there arose a loud outcry against those women as witches.
In the orphan-house at Horn, according to Eranz Kniper, in his work on the Devils, the following circumstances occurred in the same year as the strange events at Mora. In the year 1670 a great number of orphans of both sexes, but generally of the uneducated class, were at- tacked with a complaint for which various doctors of medi- cine could find no cure. The children fell down suddenly, and lost all consciousness. They were terribly racked and torn. They stamped with the feet, struck their arms and their heads on the earth, gnashed their teeth, howled and yelled like dogs. The stomachs of some of them rose and fell so violently as if they had some living thing within them. "When they lay still they were as stifi" as so many pieces of wood, and they could be carried about without their limbs moving ; in which state they frequently continued for hours. The paroxysms infected other children when they saw them, or when they only heard their howling; and they fell into this condition on almost every occasion of divine worsliip, either before the preacher, or during the hours of prayer. The more Grod was prayed to for aid, the worse became the paroxsyms. In the times of fast these children were the most disorderly, and yet the most free from these attacks, because they had freedom and pleasure, and this, therefore, was regarded as devilish. When, at length, the children were taken out of the orphan-house, and re- ceived into the families of the citizens, they became rapidly better.
The same circumstances took place amongst the girls, in the girls' school of Antoinette Bourignon at Ryssel, from 1640 to 1650, which we shall soon become better ac- quainted with, more than fifty of whom by degrees confessed that they could bewitch people ; the first, who had been shut up on account of some misdemeanour, found
WHITE MAGIC AKD TEUTH. 219
means of escape, and declared, on examination, that the devil had released her.
We have seen how the natural gifts of divining were awakened amongst men, and were diffused through sympathy. We have seen this amongst the Indians ; amongst the prophets of the school of Samuel, and the Israelites ; amongst the Greek Corybantes ; amongst the Scandinavian and Grerman Druids ; in the Taigheirm, and in the inspired dances of the Schamans, and amongst the witches of the middle ages.
Now comes another kind of visionary phenomena amongst the religious fanatics, of which the so-called Philadelphian Society, established by Pordage, displayed the most extra- ordinary specimens. All the members of the society had revelations and similar impressions of the senses, so that their visions, as it were, working from within outwardly, as by a contagion the inner senses affecting the outer ones, the wonder of all parties was excited, — the believers attri- buting the whole to the power of spirits, and the un- believers to the effect of a bewildered imagination, or to deceit, which we, instructed by magnetism, have learned to recognise as physiological realities, and to explain the causes of their productions.
If the demoniacally-prophetic was supposed in the pre- ceding phenomena, under the guidance of the devil, to play a demoralising part amid the most frightful rackings of the body and the confusion of the soul, others came forward somewhat later to unite the idea of white magic with religious faith in the divine, and in its miraculous power. This white, or natural magic, consists not in the sorcerer's faith in demoniac conjuration, — " ars subtilis nullis cere- moniis et conjiu-ationibus contaminata," but it rests, ac- cording to Paracelsus, on the knowJedge of natural powers, on the miraculous force of the imagination through faith. " Through faith, men may perform the incredible by means of the imagination, even to draw down the strength of the influences of the stars ; and if the command be combined with faith, the magically-divine spirit in us has a superhuman sphere of action, which extends itself as wide as our thoughts, our imagination, and our fiiith."
To this white magic belongs the power of working
220. HISTOKT or MAGIC.
miracles, of perceiving and using the signatures of natural things, of foretelling the future, and of uniting the spirit fully with Grod through love, and thereby becoming an immediate partaker in the being and the work of Grod. So says Campanella (De sensu rerum, c. 1 and 2.) : — " Qui magiam naturalem probe exercit cum pie- tate et reverentia erga creatorem, meretur saspe ad super- naturalem eligi, et cum superis participare : qui autem abutuiitur in maleficiis et venenis, merentur a dsemone ludificari et ad perditionem trahi. Eides requiritur et cordis puritas non historica sed intrinseca, quae cum deo unanimes nos faciat."
It is difficult to arrive, however, at this beautiful idea of magic in the highest degree, since there requires for it a genuine holiness ; and where pious minds strive honestly after it, yet they very easily stray into the flowery field of Theosophy, and thence lose themselves in that fanatic darkness of spiritual adepts, in whom the free ac- tivity of the spirit cooperates less in exertion than pious faith in passive submission, awaits immediate inspiration as the gift of divine grace without any merit of our own. "We have here to take a passing glance at examples of this kind, taken from the biographies of spiritually allied theoso- phists of the seventeenth century, and especially of Pordage, Bromley, Antoinette Bourignon, Jane Lead, Poiret, Swe- denborg, etc. In all of these, magic, in its best sense, plays the chief part ; but one-sided theosophic subtleties, and a fanaticism of the imagination as to inward enlightenment, and divination and intercourse with spirits, have also their ample share.
Pordage was an English preacher of Cromwell's time ; and being removed by the Protector from his living, he became an esteemed physician. In his principal work, " The True Divine Metaphysics," Pordage sets the power of the word with the inner vision and the right intention above everything. He who knows how to make himself master of the true word, and how to use it, and has the best intentions in using it, can produce magical effects ; since through the inward vision men become aware of distant and future things. Pordage, with these peculiarities and visions and
VISIONS OF POEDAGE. 221
intercourse with spirits, had once even a combat with a giant, who carried a tree which he had torn up, upon his shoukler, and a monstrous sword in his hand. Another time there appeared a winged dragou, who took up half the room, and vomited fire upon him, so that he fell down in a swoon. He was accustomed to such apparitions, particu- larly in the night, and the spirits went in and out of his chamber ; and according to his assurance, his wife often saw the spirits as well as himself. By that battle with the giant, Pordage does not mean an actual, but a spiritual or magical giant, as one spirit has power to operate upon another. For there is a real though inexplicable influence which one spirit can exert upon another ; and the influence of spirits can extend itself to a distance, so that a man tlirough imagination and a lively desire can efiect good or evil.
Pordage, in 1651, established amongst friends of similar views the so-called Philadelphian Society, to which after- wards some twenty members belonged ; amongst them, Jane Lead, Thomas Bramley, Edward Hoker, etc. This society increased to a hundred members, and they were called the Angelic Brethren. Soon after this establishment, all the members at once, in one of their meetings, fell into ecstasy, in which they first saw visions of the dark world in the most horrible forms, but immediately afterwards, for the refresh- ment of their spirits, they had others from the world of angels. These transports took place daily for nearly a whole month, and generally in the meetings by day, though also at night. The former, from the world of darkness, passed in great pomp before their eyes. Their carriages were drawn by beasts ; such as dragons, bears, tigers, etc. The unhappy spirits also appeared in the human form, yet in various dis- tortions ; some with the ears of cats, others with claws, or with fiery eyes, great teeth, and mouths drawn all on one side. He saw spirits pass in regular hosts on clear days before his windows ; others through the glass into the room. He saw these and other apparitions, as he expresses it, through the outward sight with the inward eye. " For when we closed our eyes, we saw just as well as when they were open. Thus we saw everything, both inward with the eyes of the mind, and outwardly with the eyes of the body."
222 niSTOET OF magic.
And then lie gives the true explanation : " The true original ground of this seeing was in the opening of the inward eye of the mind ; and thus it proceeded farther, in a magical manner, from the inward through the outward organ, through the most intimate union of the internal and ex- ternal sight."
The evil spirits, like the angels, are in all places, in the air and on the earth, and cannot be excluded. " We saw them in the open air, and we saw them pass through closed doors and ^andows, without breaking the panes, and by clear daylight. The spirits can change themselves according to pleasure into gigantic forms or into furious beasts ; as bears, lions, tigers, and snakes. From this we learn that evil spirits as well as good can be excluded froai no place, for we saw them, says he, with their pomp and state go by like the clouds in the air, and in a moment they had passed through the windows into the room. Moreover, the organs of smell were affected ; and thus the evil spirits kept up for three weeks, during which they appeared to them, a pernicious and abominable smell, which affected them greatly through the medium of the imagination." They also were persecuted with a detestable taste ; for whether alone or in company with each other, they had an intolerable de^•ilish taste of brimstone, soot, and salt, all mixed together, that would have occasioned them not only great disgust, but horror and sick- ness, had not tlie invisible hand of G-od supported them. They felt during this time exceedingly unwell, both in body and mind ; and they were conscious of strange magical wounds, and stabs, and plagues, such as no one can describe except such as have been tried like Job, etc. The devils, says Pordage, finally drew all sorts of figures on the windows, and also on the tiles of the house, which they could not wash away ; such as the two hemispheres of the globe, car- riages full of men drawn by four horses, and which pictures appeared always to be in motion.
To these enthusiastic spirit-seers belonged particularly Thomas Bromley, Madame Antoinette Bourignon, and Jane Lead. Both ladies, through their intellectual accomplish- ments, and their numerous writings, have left an extended fame and a lasting interest ; so that we must pay them some attention.
ANTOINETTE BOURIGNON. 223
Antoinette Bouriguon was born in Eyssel, in Flanders, in 1616, where she founded the above-mentioned ladies' school, and endeavoured to educate the children committed to her care, rather for heaven than earth ; but which did not succeed. For the children preferred remaining on the earth, and therefore they were not able to follow the spiritual flight of their governess into heaven ; they only reached, at the highest, the region of the air, and then fell, through the want of bodily nourishment, into the company of the sor- cerers, who at that time haunted the world in all directions. Madame Bourignon was supported by the pious in these endeavours through spiritual exercises, but by the mockers she was declared to be a fool. She was finally obliged to quit the school, and after she had suffered severe trials from the kingdom of Satan, whom she had presented in many strange shapes in her writings, she rescued herself by flight. From her earliest years she had loved a quiet and retired life, exercised in pious practices; she had a decided drawing towards a conventual existence, which her parents did not permit her to indulge. As she could not attain to the object of her desires, she converted her chamber into a cell, where she had a beautiful crucifix, and passed the greater part of her nights on her knees in prayer. During such devotional exercises, she had often apparitions, which indicated her call to a soli- tary and unmarried life. As, however, during the life of her parents, she could not obtain her wish of retiring into the wilderness in the garb of an anchorite, after their death, through the means of one Saulieu, this girls' school was established for her. After he had set up a similar boys' school which met with little support, he made her an offer of marriage. The pious Bourignon rejected such a proposi- tion with horror, and these witch-apparitions in her school were attributed to the disappointed Saulieu.
Bourignon then went to live at Ghent, in Belgium, and afterwards in Hamburg, where she continued her ascetic practices with others of like mind, maintaining her mantic and gnostic views ; and by her numerous writings she gave rise to many theological controversies, in which she had very celebrated men as her supporters ; amongst others, Johann Swammerdam, who in liis latter years submitted all hia writings to her inspection and judgment. She pub-
224 HISTOEY OF MAGIC.
lished herself her autobiography : " I^a vie interieure et ex- terieure de B,, par elle-merae." And Poiret republished this with the rest of her writings, as — " La derniere misericorde de Dieu ; la lumiere nee en tenebres ; le nouveau eiel et la nouvelle terre," etc. Finally, her life has been published at Leipsig, in 1809, in the Pantheon of Celebrated Women.
Jane Lead, of a noble family in Norfolk, had enjoyed a careful education, but displayed in her youth a passion for solitude. After the death of her husband, with whom she had lived in wedlock seven-and-twenty years, she had her first apparition, which, according to her own account, showed evidence of great excitement. She now withdrew from all domestic afi'airs, lived nearly isolated, and, as a member of the Philadelphian Society, had those apparitions of spirits which proceed from the light of Christ, the spiritual bride- groom, and from the Sophia in G-od, and the magic strength of those who are born again. This strength is to be com pared to a creative breath or to a life-giving flame, as she expresses it, and which propagates itself as a spiritual root which takes hold on others, and thus extends itself increas- ingly. He wlio possesses it is enabled by it to command the whole of nature, — plants, beasts, and the mineral kingdom, and when much magic operates through one organ, can mould all nature into a paradise. She has published a great number of writings, as — " Clouds," " The Eevelation of Eevelations," "The Laws of Paradise," "The Wonders of the Creation of Grod," " An Embassy to the Philadelphian Society." All these appeared in the ninetieth year of the seventeenth century at Amsterdam. Her writings are wholly included in " Jager's Acta Leadiana," Tubingen, 1712.
During the Thirty Tears War,, Anna M. Fliescher of Freiburg, of whom Andreas Moller speaks at length in his account of that city, created a great sensation in Germany. She had before related similar visions and revelations, but was a greater enthusiast than those already mentioned, and suffered from epilepsy and terrible convulsions, so that in her paroxysms she was thrown hither and thither as by the devil's power ; nay, was even lifted three ells into the air. She climbed up tall stones and roofs, and placed herself in the utmost peril while she sang holy songs. In
VISIONS ATTD EELIGIOTJS ECSTASIES. 225
her transports, she saw a shining yonth, Tvho brought her the revelations, and exhorted her to good ; but the devil, too, appeared to her with all sorts of temptations and plagues, so that her body and limbs were dislocated, and after the attacks were again reset by the youth. MolJer says, the wrenching, agitation, and restoration of her limbs took place as though it were done by a surgeon, which was witnessed both by myself and two physicians of this city, as
well as many other persons. Praulein H had an actual
dislocation of the hip-joint, which I magnetised, and in magnetic sleep replaced, but she had no visions.
At no time did more enthusiasts, visionaries, and prophets appear, than in the first half of the seventeenth century, and during the Thirty-years' War, in which troubles of all sorts, sorrow and suflering, hunger and plague, overspread Germany. Terror and misfortune, expectation and longing after freedom, so excited the minds of the religious partizans of that time, that religious zeal and heroic faith, as well as fanaticism and fantastic transports, were the order of the day. A great number of persons might, therefore, be added to these as examples, who in form and substance exactly agree with them. Most of them were bodily and spiritually sick, on which account their visions belong less to the category of religious imaginative pictures. Thus, Christiana Poniatowitzsch, a daughter of a Protestant clergyman, through her visions and prophesyings in Bohemia and Germany, excited great attention. She had both night and day, with botli open and closed eyes, visions of all kinds, transports and communion with spirits, like Swedenborg ; but with her transports she had, at the same time, the most horrible spasms, till at length she fell into a swoon, and the spasms aud visions left her for ever.
Isot only these religious ecstatics, but others, and even sober philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, placed the power of imagination very high ; nay, not seldom beside enthusiastic exaggeration, so that a father said to his ecstatic daughter Seraphine, and witli great truth : — " Thou knowest not, dear child, what a fearful creature man carries about with him in his own imagination. Seraphine will uot be the last victim of this murderess."
Many of the philosophical writers of that century have dwelt
VOL. ir. Q
226 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
largely on the nabiire of the imaginative power, which shows that they had a deeper conception of it than at present is the case, when imagination is regarded as a wholly fleet- ing, shapeless form of representation, and as a wind hurrying past. The most eminent of these philosophers are Paracelsus, Yan Hehnont, Campanella, Poiret, etc.
Poiret, in his " Divine Housekeeping," agrees entirely with Pordage, tiiat the spirit, the creative imagination, per- ceives tilings no othervdse than through an infusion of itself into them, or through a pouring of its own light into them, by which it becomes, to a certain degree, present to external objects. Thus, for instance, the divine communi- cation of a revelation takes place through an immediate illumination of the human soul, and thus is God made present with men. This revelation cannot take place in a soul which is not the image of Grod ; which is not of a divine nature. But man possesses the same creative power, though in a less degree, and of a less noble quality, in his reason and imagination. As Grod created the actual world through the iiibeaming of his imagination and his will, so he con- ferred imagination on man, by the help of which he can represent tilings to himself. He gave him not, indeed, the creative power of mind, to bring forth material things, but the equally, and, in a certain sense, not less active imagina- tion, by means of which he originally could handle physical objects as he could the pictures of his own imagination. Thus, for example, through imagination, he could so operate on an animal, by his will, which he beheld at a distance, that it should come nearer to him, so that in this manner he could rule absent things even as he now rules present ones. Originally man could by gestures and words, by the exertion of his imagination and his will, command the whole physical world. Thus, as we now can move our members as we will, because secret force flows from us into them, so could man through secret spiritual influence operate on the physical world, which was present to him or near to him ; for, says Poiret, one is just as conceivable or inconceivable as the other. It was merely a renewal of the original nature of man, when the saints of the old time, in concert with their imaginations and the force of their wills, performed such wonderM things through the
COXCLTJSIVE SUMMARY. 227
might of their word ; and thence the theurgic faith of all time in the omnipotence of adjuration. I'or example, Avhen Noah called the animals to him into the ark ; when Joshua, -commanded the sun ; and Moses the Ked Sea. Man did not originally receive speech in order to communicate his thoughts to his fellows ; for that he could originally do through a secret iuiluence, or through tlie mere desire of communication. He says, also, what Franz von Eaader confirms, that man can not plasticly create, but he can dominate and imaginate over that which is created.
After the above concise summary of this last historical period, I quote as a conclusion the follov\"i]ig judgment upon it, from my work on Magnetism : — 1st. A certain prophetic faculty is a common property of tlie human race, vvhich becomes conspicuous in proportion as man withdraws him- self from the external physical world. 2nd. Man discovers from this a higher power of the spirit, and a less cii'cum- scribed sphere of action for it ; and this power can, accord- ing to the direction of the will, adapt itself to good or evil. 3rd. But it easily happens that the imagination acquiring a predominating action in the inner world of mind, separates itself from the guiding understanding, and then loses itself in an unrestrained flight in obscui'e paths, so that the sub- jective image of contemplation takes the place of the objective one of reality, and attributes to it external sub- stances ; as the apparitions of the Angelic Brethren show. 4th, The imagination thus excited, can in so free a flight and in the predominating religious mood of mind, be easily misled to fanaticism, if the general intercourse with man be inter- rupted or wholly abandoned. 5th. In such a state of things visions may have an injurious reflex action on the body, and injure the health, Gth. In such a wavering condition of the body and the soul, the functions of life become, in fact, diseased : the senses produce visions, and the muscles spasms, as an abnormal condition, in which transports and madness are more frequently the result than truth and strength. 7th. As the soul and the body have their ti-ue equilibrium, and occasion mutually defective functions and sympathies, so can an over-excited or false subjective condi- tion of the senses draw all or several of the objective senses into a diseased sympathy of sutfering ; as we have seea
228 niSTOET OF magic.
in tlie witclies of the Pliiladelpliian Society, and as we frequently find to be the case in the magnetic phenomena of a degraded class of persons, in ^Yhich smell, taste, and feel- ing, all have a smack of the spiritual cesspool within them. 8th. In so great a susceptibility and, as it were, demoralized state of the imagination, the objective impression of the senses easily passes in tone and form over into the inner movements of the subjective life, so that a loud sound, or a flash of light, may change themselves into a speaking Toice and fixed luminous image, as is often the case with excit- able, imaginative artists ; and which is then the result of an exclusive attention to one object, as in the instance of the drawings left by the devil with Pordage, which on being looked at appeared to move ; by which the reversal of the polarity of the senses, and the passing over of the inner sense to the outward organs of the senses, is no longer so perplexing. Ofch. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at, if uneducated magical seers, or enthusiastic minds, once sunk in such a visionary life, exert no judgment and no discrimination, in order to distinguish the subjective image of the imagination from the objective reality, 10th. Apart from deception and wilful deceit, self-delusion is very possible ; appearance and fact, truth and error, may no longer be distinguishable from each other. 11th. So long as man lives on earth he must cherish his body, and allow it to receive all that is good for it. as well as cultivate the soul : for the sound body only ]ias a sound soul. Where the limbs are contracted by spasms, the spirit sees apparitions. 12th The business of life is not mere visionary contemplation and indolent seclusion,, but an active faith to do the work of love in a social com- munity.
229
THIRD DIVISION,
MYSTIC DOCTEIJiTES, AlsD ETs-DEATOTJES APTES A PHILOSOPHI- CAL ELTJCIDATIOif OP THE MAGIC OE THE MIDDLE AGES.
As I here propose to go no furfclier into the history of philo- sopliy, and in regard to the mystic philosophy in particular, refer to Molitor's work " The Philosopliy of History, Part 3rd," I shall confine myself especially to those men who had magic and magical circumstances pre-eminently in view, and who have left behind them instructive hints and specu- lations upon them, highly advantageous to the history of magnetism.
THEOPHEASTL'S PAEACELSUS.
^ Unquestionably Paracelsus deserves one of the niost eminent places in the history of magic ; nay, we may assert} that with him begins properly a new epoch in that history, since he not only awoke tlie mind to a higher endeavour, but still more, was the founder of a very remarkable school of magnetism, and that in more than one respect.
As to what relates to the phenomena, the mode of trent- ing it, and to the theory of magnetism, we have already seen sufficient examples in the ancient times, and so down- wards ; but no man has developed the doctrine of the reci- procating elements of life with such perspicuity, such strik- ing illustration, and such impressive language, as Paracelsus. Paracelsus was the first who compared this universal
230 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
reciprocity of life in fill creations, in tlie great as in tli&- small, with the magnet : so that the word mac/netism, in the sense in which we understand it, originated with Paracelsus.
This doctrine of magnetism is scattered* in a most re- mai'kable manner through the works of Paracelsus, who lived three hundi^ed years before our time ; so that by seeking them out and collecting them they become very instructive to us. His conceptions of magnetic reciprocity were so clear and just, his ideas upon it, which he for the most part corro- borated by his own experience, were of so lofty and pecu- liar a scope, that it is difficult for us to emulate his flight. But as he, as a spiritual philosopher, taught, and not only taught, but founded his system on the doctrine of emanation ot all things from a primal Being, and on the emanations of the stars and the elementary bodies, and their influences on each other, people, from a great want of historical information, have regarded him as the originator of the Cabbalah ; and as the essential principles of this school were not understood, and as the very name was a bugbear, Paracelsus was set down as a noisy theorist, an enthusiast and adventurer, and, through traditionary custom, this character has, in a great degree, adhered to him to the present time. A principal cause of this, indeed, was, that such unusual and startling asser- tions, brought forward in an incomprehensible style and in barbarous terms, and defended against his enemies with such lively fire, and with such bitterness and caustic wit, that it was not to be Avondered at that it gave rise, in a man of such impetuous temperament, to much exaggerated and mysterious trash and a variety of nonsense.
I vrill now introduce some passages of the Paracelsian doctrine, and for tliat purpose avail myself of the works of Plemmann (Medico-Surgical Essays, Berlin, 1778) and Pfaff's Astrology; to which I shall add some important extracts on magnetism from his own works.
Tliis extraordinary man, says Hemmann, gifted by nature with the most original talents, lived in an age when the science of medicine had degenerated to a shallow school gossip, and the disciples of G-alen, spite of their gossiping and their passion for controversy and disputation, were the most wretched pretenders in the healing of diseases. He was one of the jireatest chemists of his time ; and as he-
THEOPHEASTUS PAEACELSUS. 231
saw through much experience that the Galenic doctors, with their bleeding, purging, and emetics (for in those things consisted the whole lumber), scarcely succeeded in curing a single disease ; and that pedlars, newsmongers, and the like fellows, were often more successful than these puifed-up dri- vellers, it coukl not fail but that a genius, who was least of all things calculated to become a miserable imitator, should conceive the intensest hatred and contempt for the Galenic art of healing.
"I have in the beginning," says Paracelsus, "just as muchas my opponents, thrown myself with fervent zeal on the teachers ; but when I saw that nothing resulted from their practice, but killing, death, murdering, laming and distorting — that the greatest number of complaints were deemed by them to be incurable, and that they scarcely administered anything but syrups, laxatives, purgatives, and oatmeal-gruel, pumpkins or citrons, jalap, and other such messes, with everlasting clysters, I determined to abandon such a miserable art, and to seek truth by some other way. I considered with myself, that if there were no teacher of medicine in the world, how would I set about to learn the art ? ]S'o otherwise than in the great open book of nature, written with the finger of God. This I now studied, and the books of the physicians no longer ; for every pretender has his own hobby ; and who can here obtain any result, or discover the truth r I am accused and denounced for not having entered in at the right door of art. But which is the right one ? Galen, Avicenna, Mesne, Bhasis, or honest na- ture ? I believe, the last ! Through this door I entered, and the light of nature, and no apothecar}* 's lamp, directed me on my way."
Paracelsus, continues Hemmann, set out on this journey, but he did not, like our effeminate men of learning, drive through the world in a post-chaise. lie went on foot, and did not seek merely a collection of snails and butterflies. Througli his mode of travelling he had the best opportunities of observing everything wortliy of notice in nature. As he had studied metallurgy, he was, therefore, in a condition to examine the mines of Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and Norway, with advantage. He travelled through the greater part of the then known world, and spared neither labour nor
232 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
research to enrich his mind with profitable knowledge. " I have pursued art," he said, " even at the risk of my life, and have not been ashamed to learn even of pedlars, news- mongers, and barbers." He learned by these means the art of healing wounds, and practised with great success and fame in this department. With this rare, and at that time extraordinary mass of knowledge and experience, he was called to become a lecturer in the university of Basle, to vrhich the most celebrated men were invited from all parts. On his travels he had considerably unlearned his Latin, and was, therefore, compelled to teach in German, a circum- stance which at that time was looked upon as an unheard-of heresy. He was boldly attacked on account of his travels, and also on account of his simple mode of living and dress- ing. In his sixth defence he vindicated his travels with much warmth ; broke loose with great bitterness on the Galenic cushion-pressers, who dared not to go out of doois except on an ass or in a carriage ; and concluded his defence with the following noble sentiment : " Writings are understood by their letters, but nature through travel, and the difterent lands and provinces are the leaves of the code of nature."
Paracelsus manifests in many parts of his works the highest veneration for Hippocrates, who had pursued the very mode by which he himself sought the truth ; but the unfounded theories of Galen, and the conceits with which the Arabs had surrounded him, were an abomination to him. This it is, and not his knowledge, which his opponents accused him of, and which he declaimed against his whole life through. " The charge of drunkenness," says Hemmann, " proceeds from the impure source of Oporinus, who lived with him some time in order to learn his secrets, but his object was defeated ; and hence the evil reports of his disciples and the apothecaries." He himself says that these and the apothecaries have, more than any others, traduced him ; the first, because he would not publish his secrets ; and the second, because he wrote his recipes in the simple ver- nacular. " The apothecaries," he says, "are my enemies, because I will not empty their boxes. My recipes are simple, and do not consist of from forty to sixty ingredients, as those of the Galenic doctors ; but it is my duty to heal the sick, and not to enrich the apothecaries."
PAEACELSTJS ON THE MAGXET. 233
In tlie essay on the power of tlie magnet, he sajs, '* The magnet has long lain before all eyes, and no one has ever thought whether it was of any further use, or whether it possessed any other property, than that of attracting iron. The sordid doctors throw it in my face, that I will not follow the ancients ; but in what should I follow them ? All that they have said of the magnet amounts to nothing. Lay that which I have said of it in the balance, and judge. Had I blindly followed others, and had I not myself made experi- ments, I should in like manner know nothing more than what every peasant sees— that it attracts iron. But a wise man must enquire for himself, and it is thus that 1 have discovered that the magnet, besides this obvious and to every man visible power, that of attracting iron, possesses another and concealed power,"
" In sickness you must lay the magnet in the centre from which the sickness proceeds. The magnet has two poles, an attracting and a repelling one (Paracelsus terms it the back and the belly) . It is not a matter of indifference to which of these polesamanapplies. For instance, on the falling sickness and every kind of epilepsy, where the attack affects more particuLirly the head, it is proper to lay four magnets on the lower part of the body, with the attracting pole turned upwards, and on the head only one with the reflecting pole downwards ; and then you bring other means to their aid. This paragraph, says Paracelsus, is of more value than all that the Galenists have learned or have taught in the whole course of their lives. If, instead of their boastings, they had taken a magnet, they might have affected more than they ever would with all their learned swagger. He cured by this means defluxions of the eyes, ears, nose, and other members, as well as fistulas, cancers, and other ailments. Further, the magnet draws together ruptures, and cures them ; it draws away jaundice and dropsy, as I have often experienced in my practice." In another place he «ays, " I find such secrets hidden in the magnet, that without it I could, in many cases, have effected nothing."
A great part of the system of Paracelsus is based on magnetism. In man there is a something sidereal, or a life
234 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
"^hich emanates from the stars. Whether this is precisely physical or not, it may, in respect to the far greater body, be considered a spirit. This life stands in connection with the stars from which it lias been drawn, and attracts their strength to it, like a mag-net. This life he calls the " Magnes Microcosmi" — the little world, and explains through it many circumstances in nature. In the second book on the plague, he teaches that there lies an attractive power in man, which draws diseases out of chaos. In the fourth treatise on the plague, he asserts that the magnetic power is diffused throughout nature ; that the human mummy draws the poisonous properties out of the moon, the stars, and other things towards itself; whilsi, on the other hand, the moon, and the stars again attract poisonous exhalations to them- selves, and impart them to others.
Man is ta^en out of the four elements, and is nourished by them ; but not merely palpably so through the stomach, but also imper-ceptibly through the magnetic power, which resides in all nature, and by which every individual member draws its specific nourishment to itself.
The sun and the stars attract from us to themselves, and we from them again to us. Those secret influences have their positive office in the maintenance of the body.
Upon this theory of magnetism is based the sympathetic cure of disease. Paracelsus says on this head, that in the mummy, or so-called magnet, all physical power resides, and that a little dose draws everything homogeneous in the whole body to itself. One can in this way free oneself in the most wonderful manner from diseases which are the most difficult of cure, as gout, rheumatism, etc., when we convert our- selves, as it were, to iron ; tliat is, when we apply a small part of the decayed mummy to another sound body. This draws immediately the whole of the disease, as the magnet does the iron, to itself; and the first becomes sound, the second receives the disease.
The celebratedMagisteriumMagnetisis atincture extracted from the magnet. In the fourth book, Archidoxarum, he boasts of this tincture that it is a specific ; that it will draw every kind of disease out of the human body. He believed that this tincture even communicated its properties to the
PAKACELSUS 0^' MAa>'ETIC TOTVEE. ' 235
vial in wliicli it was kept, and that it could not only attract iron, but straws and other bodies. So far Hemmann or Paracelsus.
Very many beautiful and instructive things are contained in the books upon the nature of the stars (De Ente astrorum, lib. i.) ; on tlie nature of spirits (Dc Ente spirituali, lib. iv.) ; 'on the nature of God (De Ente Dei, lib. v.) ; the book on the plague, etc.
Paracelsus compares the body to wood, and the life to fire. But this comes, like the light, from the stars and from heaven: " firmamento et ex astris promanat." He styles magic the philosophy of Alchemy ; the discoverer of the healing art, and the principles of it, the analysis of Medicine. But that is not like the magic, which man does not under- stand (Theophrasti Paracelsi Opera omnia, Genevic, 1658, vol. i. i3p. 634 and 698.)
He laid immense importance on the knowledge of the machinery of the stars. " "VVe must know," he says, "that man has somethins^ masfnetic in him, without which he can- not exist. But the magnetism is there on accoimt of man, not man on account of the magnetism. This magnetic principle contains the magnetism of man, and comes from the stars, and nowhere else."
" Sciendum est, debere hominem habere Magnaue, sine quo vivere nequeat. Magnate enim propter hominem factum est, non homo propter Magnale. Hoc Magnale Magnale homines sustentat, hoc autem ex astris descendit et ex nullo alio." — L. c. p. 167.
In another place he says : — " Similcm attractivam vim in se homo quoque conditam fert, qua) in uno gradu cum mag- netica vi versatur. Jam ergo homo foris sccus per vim illam ad se trahit circumstans sibi cliaos. Hinc sequitui* infectio ccvis in homine. Hinc intelligite, quod magnes est spiritualis in homine fit quaerens hominem infectum, si uniatur foris cum chao. Sic sani per magneticam banc attractionem ab ?egris inficiuntur." — L. c. p. 411.
"A similar attractive power is born with men, which resembles a kind of magnetic power. Through this power man draws cliaos to himself from without, and tlierefore follows the infection of the air by men."
He has in a very remarkable manner explained infection
*236 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
as magnetic, and in tlie same way as Frederick Hufeland lias done recently (On Sympathy, etc.)
"Therefore," he says, "you must understand that the magnet is that spirit of life in man which the infected man seeks, as hoth unite themselves with chaos from without. And thus the healthy are infected by the unhealthy through magnetic attraction. The fact may be shown by an example. When sound eyes look at bleared ones, the sound eyes attract the chaos of the diseased eyes to them, and the evil passes immediately over into the sound eyes."
We understand what was the opinion of Paracelsus on this head from the following words : — " I assert," he says, " decidedly and openly, what I have learned of the magnet from experience, that there lies in it a secret of so exalted a character, that without its means we cannot cure many diseases" (1. c. p. 194^.)
It is, also, further remarkable that Paracelsus based the whole of his theory on the Bible, which he knew almost by rote. Therefore he denounced the teaching of his oppo- nents in the bitterest terms, as erroneous doctrines. This severe language probably caused him so many mortal enemies. It is worth the while to hear his own words on this subject : —
" Ye of Paris, Padua, Montpellier, Salerno, Vienna, and Leipzig ; ye are not teachers of the truth, but the confessors of lies (confessores mendaciorum.) Tour philosophy is a lie. Would you know what magic is, then seek it in the ^Revelations (ex apocalypsi quaerite rem.) This is precisely the trouble and misery of the world, that all your arts are founded on lies. It is true that ye cry all of you with one mouth, that your philosophy does not need the evidence of the Scriptures. As you cannot yourselves prove your teach- ings from the Bible and the Kevelations, then let your farces have an end. The Bible is the true key and interpreter. John, not the less than Moses, Elias, Enoch, David, SolomoD, Daniel, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets, was a magician, Cabbalist, and diviner. If now all, or even any of those I have named, were yet living, I do not doubt that you would make an example of them in your miserable slaughter-house, and^would annihilate them there, and, if it were possible, the Creator of all things too" (1. c. p. 382.)
PAEACELSrS ON THE THEEE SPIRITS TX MAN. 237
"Talismans," says Paracelsus, " are the boxes in wliich the heavenly influences are preserved!"
Farther, lie speaks in "Philosoplnafugaci," of theCabbalah^ and of magic rings, by which persons may be brought into a condition which enables them to know what is taking placo two hundred miles off. In another book (Archidoxis magica) he speaks of talismans and sympathetic salves, with which wounds may be cured without touching them.
The most remarkable part of what Plaff has selected from Paracelsus is found in the following passages : —
" Three spirits live in and actuate man ; three worlds cast their beams upon him ; but all three only as the image and echo of one and the same all-constructing and uniting principle of production. The first . is the spirit of the elements ; the second the spirit of the stars ; the third is the Divine Spirit." Thus taught, in the sixteenth century, Paracelsus. In these three branches all human wisdom that leads to God develops itself. It comes forth in the forms of physiology, astrology, and theology. That pervad- ing band of universal consciousness is united in the stars, and from it is all human wisdom named ; that is astronomy and nature, brought down hither from the stars ; Astronomy from above ; the wisdom and the work of those devoted to God ; Astronomy of the new Olympus ; the em])loyment and the life of those inspired through faith.
The spirit of the elements rules the lower propensities of man. But as there is only one life, so there is onh* one in the stars as the copies in animal and human forms- which they nourish. Thus is fixed in man, through the spirit of the elements, that general life of the earth in the deeper and more confined organisation. All created things are letters and books to describe the origin and descent of man. Thus, says Paracelsus, is the great world a domain of the little world ; therefore in the little are all the kinds of dragons, serpents, the race of vipers, adders, and the nature of wolves and sheep. Thus the human body is possessed of primeval stuff (earth-clod in the Scriptures), and as a portion of the earth has received into itself the stany influence, which itself nourislics the earthly body, by which it is able to enter into union with the astral spirits, as it were, into a marriage. Therefore, as man in himself may learn the elements, he mu^L.t
238 iiiSTOEi or magic.
also learn the sidereal, he must also learn the eternal. Three lights thus burn in man, and thus there are three species of learning, and in the three is man perfected. And although it is true that two lights are a darkness to the third, yet they are the lights of the world, in which man by the help of natural lights must wander.
The body comes from the elements, the spirit from the stars. All that the brain produces takes its inspiration from the stars. Although all musicians should die, yet the same schoolmaster, Heaven, is not dead, which would become a teacher anew. Many stars have not yet had their in- fluence ; therefore the discovery of arts is not yet come to an end. Man eats and drinks of the elements, for the sus- tenance of his blood and flesh ; from the stars are the in- tellect and thoughts sustained in his spirit."
Another image is the image of the magnet : — " God has ordained that man has a magnet in himself; one, namely, of the elements ; therefore he attracts them again to himself; one of the stars, out of which he again draws to himself the microcosmic sensient faculty of the stars."
" The whole world surrounds man, and is surrounded as -a point is surrounded by a circle. Thus it follows that all things have their impulse in their centres, even as a pippin lies in an apple, and draws from it its nourishment ; for it is surrounded by the apple, and is sustained by the apple, and from it is derived also its nourishment."
"Whether a fire burns or not may be discovered by water, much or little. Thus is man, in the midst of t]ie world. He is received and surrounded as a pot which stands in the midst of a tripod; and as the pot and whatever is contained in it must do w^hat the fire will, — boil, steam, etc., so is it with the body. In the same manner as fire passes through an iron stove, do the stars pass through man with all then* properties, and go into him as the rain into the earth, which gives fruit out of that same rain. Now observe that the stars surround the whole earth, as a shell does the egg ; through the shell comes the air, and penetrates to the centre of the world. As the fish suffer in the pond, when heat or cold enters it, so the vapour of the stars J. asses through man."
He speaks of the poisoning of the atmosphere, of the
THE YIEWS OF PAEACELSL'S. 239
exhaling of tlie planets into the air of the universe ; hut only one side of the sidereal power is here observed, that which we call the disturbing of the atmosphere, and which has a general influence on the physical condition of man at large, on cleanness, and medical perfection.
This doctrine of Paracelsus has certainly a very deep mean- ing ; but we must not take it too literally, as people for the most part are too apt to do, and, therefore, immediately perceive an odour of corruption in this planetary influence.
" Time is the life of the stars ; the circling and w^orking together of them. Xot alone through the sun does the earth measure out its time. All that returns in circulating time to the earth, to animals and to man, acknowledges the lordship of the stars. The particular life of earth must accord with the general life of higher worlds, for Grod in. love has created us the sidereal body, and has given it sensi- bility, that we may feel and reveal the secrets of the stars.
The temporal and periodical, when interrupted, produce the monstrous, as is seen in disease ; in this disturbance of fixed laws we find the phenomenon of sickness. Paracelsus attri- butes some kinds of sicknesses to a sensibility to planetary influences; in others the gift of prophecy to the same cause.
As the monstrous is an efiect produced by opposition to the life of the stars and of individuals, there are also prog- nostications of that which nature further works out, of that which strives to put an end to this opposition. Paracelsus, therefore, warns astronomers thus : " And let no astronomer make a rule to himself, and measure the harmony of the heavens there witli. He who cannot fathom such a matter is as good an astronomer as a relic-box is a priest."
In dreams a man is like the plants, which have also the elementary and vital body, but possess not the spirit. In sleep the astral body is in freer motion ; then it soars to its parents ; it holds converse with the stars. And after death also it returns to the stars, and the earthy body descends then into the bosom of the earth. Dreams, forebodings, prescience, prognostications, and presentiments, are the gifts of the sidereal, and are not imparted to the elementary body.
" Now the cause and ^origin," says Paracelsus, '' of this
240 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
divination is thus. That man is possessed of an astral body that unites with the outward stars, and they two confabulate together, when the astral does not trouble itself about the elementary body. As in sleep the elementary body rests, the sidereal continues its action ; it has neither rest nor sleep ; but when the elementary body predominates and overcomes, then rests the sidereal. But when the elementary rests, then come dreams, as the stars operate, and such are dreams and their revelations. And according as the stars are disposed, so are the dreams. For, as we have said, the stars give nothing to the avaricious and the self-con- ceited ; for selfishness and conceit expel the operation of the firmament, and resist the stars."
In accordance with the whole of his views of nature, Paracelsus attributes to animals also presentiments ; for they too have an astral body.
Paracelsus has written a whole book on the existence of fools. " AVisdom," he says, is also in fools, and breaks forth like a lighc through horn, dim and murky ; or like a light through a fog." He recommends us to notice their decla- rations and to endeavour to comprehend them. Pfaff closes his essay with the following words : —
" So much from the writings and the spirit of a man who has taken the most comprehensive views of natural things ; the bold creator of chemical medicines ; the founder of cou- rageous parties ; victorious in controversy, belouging to those spirits who have created amongst us a new mode of thinking on the natural existence of things. What he scatteredthrough his writings on the Philosopher's Stone, on Pigmies and Spirits of the Mines ; on signs, on homunculi, on pictures, meteors, impressions, and the Elixir of Life, and which are employed by many to lower his estimation, cannot extinguish our grateful remembrance of his general Avorks, nor our ad- miration of his free, bold exertions, and his intellectual life."
In the Strasburg edition, 1603, Paracelsus writes of the power and operation of the spirit. '* It is possible," he says, " that my spirit, without the help of the body, and through a fiery wil] alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others. It is also possible tliat I can bring the spirit of my adversary into an image, and then double
PAEACELSUS OS T±1TIL ASJ) ilAG^'ETISlI. 2J:1
him up and lame biin according to pleasure. You are to know that tlie exertion of the will is a great point in the art of medicine. Man can hang disease on man and beast through curses; but it does not take effect by means of strength of character, virgin wax, or the like : the imagination alone is the means of fulfilling the intention. Every imagination of man comes from the heart, for this is the sun of the microcosm ; and out of the microcosm proceeds the imagination into the great world. Thus the imagination of man is a seed, which is material. Determined imagination is a beginning of all magi- cal operations. Fixed thought is also a means to an end. I cannot turn my eye about with my hand, but the sternly fixed imagination turns it wherever it will. The imagina- tion of another may be able to kill me. Imagination springs out of pleasure and desire ; therefore envy and hatred follow; for desire is followed by the deed. A curse may be realised when it springs from the heart ; thus the curses of fathers and mothers proceed from the heart. And when any one will lame or stab another, he must first in imagi- nation thrust the weapon into himself; he must conceive the wound, and it will be given through the thought, as if it were done with the hands. The magical is a great concealed wisdom, and reason is a great public foolishness. JS"© armour protects against magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life. Of this we may be assured, that, through faith and a powerful imagination only, we can bring any mnn's spirit into an image. There requires no conjuration and ceremonies ; circle-making and incensing are mere humbug and juggling. The human spirit is so great a thing that no man can express it : as God himself is eternal auvl un- changeable, so also is the mind of man. If we riglitly understood the mind of man nothing would be impossible to us on earth. Tlic imagination is invigorated and i)er- fected tln-ough faith, for it really happens that every doubt breaks the operation. Faith must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will. Because men do not perfccily imagine and believe, the result is that the arts are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain."
YOL. II.
HISTORY OF MAGIC.
BAPTISTA VAN HELMONT.
One of the worthiest and most able of the successors of Paracelsus 'U'as the great A'au Helmont, who, on account of his vast knowledge, his acute judgment, and penetrating spirit, created a new epoch in medicine. In the history of magnetism he takes the very first rank, since he brought into this dark field a light more clear than any one before or since has done.
In order to make this tlioroughly apparent and instructive, I will extract, with diligence and fidelity, from his works such of his doctrines as belong to this subject, (J. Bapt. van Helmont, opera omnia, Francos. 1682) ; and, in ad- dition, avail myself of the excellent work of Deleuze (De r opinion de Van Helmont sur la cause, la nature et les eftets du IMagnetisme, par Deleuze : Bibliotheque du Magn. Anim. t. i. p. 45 ; et t. ii. p. 198, Paris, 1877.) Deleuze says, that in the writings of Van Helmont he has found much common popular belief, tasteless opinions, mythic, illusory ideas, and dark and incomprehensible things, but at the same time great truths. If some person, therefore, would collect liis works, explain them, and extract the facts on which he founds his doctrines, he would produce a great and highly remarkable work, and throw new light on the knowledge of magnetism.
" Van Helmont was a man of genius," says Deleuze, '• who created epochs in the histories of medicine and physiology. He first turned aside out of the beaten high- way of Galen and the Arabs, and showed the way of life. He first recognised the vast activity of the stomach, and its dominion over the other organs : lie saw that the diaphragm v.-as the central point of the living body. AVhilst he contem- plated the total of things, and enquired into the causes of their alternating influences on each other, he found in all bodies a general cause, an especial activity, which the Creator had impressed upon them, and through which one acted upon the other. This he denominated Bias. He was the first to give the name of gas to aerial fluids. Without him it is probable tliat steel would have given no new impulse
liAPTISTA VAN IIELMOZnT. 213
^ In trer^tiiig of the magnetic cure of wounds, Van Helmor.t undertakes to answer two writers, Gocleuius, jDrofessor in Marburg, who defended the cure of wounds by ti^o vliscovered sympathetic salve of Paracelsus ; the other, Father Robert, a Jesuit, who condemned all these cures, not because he denied them, but because he attributed them to the devil. Van Helmont savs he Avas implored to decide on these matters, since thev affected Paracelsus as their discoverer, and himself as his disciple. He says that lie found Groclenius far too v.eak to be the defender of the mac;'- iietic cures from natural causes, and the priest far too youn^- to decide upon a matter, and to declare it to be of the devil, since he had not shown a siugle spark of reason for his opinions. He feels himself bound to excuse Groclenius, though he had in vain laboured at a new discovery ; but he complains of the priest. " For nature," he said, "has not chosen the priests as her interpreters, but has elected the physicians as her sons, and yet of them such only as under- stand the science of lire, and have enquired into the nature of peculiar qualities. The priests must first receive from us the fundamental knowledge, that they do not, as cobblers, fall upon the last. The theologian shall enquire after God, the naturalist after nature" (J. c. p. 705). I will now quote the most remarkable passages which this great n^aster has written concerning the magnetic wonders (De mag- netica vuluer. curatione, p. 708, 1. c.)
" Material nature," he says, " draws her forms through constant magnetism from above, and implores for them tl:e favour of heaven : and as heaven, in like manner, draws somethiug invisible from below, there is established a free -and mutual intercourse, and the whole is contained in an individual."
This magnetism, because it predominates everywhere, lias nothing new besides the name, and nothiug contraiy to common sense, except to those who ridicule everything, and attribute to the power of the devil what they do' not uudor- tstand. And what, theu, is there superstitious in the bolief in a sympathetic salve, except tliat its use was new, the people unaccustomed to it, and, tlierefore, the won- derful in it seeined to be tlie work of the devil ?
He who considers magnetic cures to be of the devil, not be-
2^-1 HisTOET or :»rAGic.
cause tliey are procured by forbidden means, and Lave a culpable object, but because they are eftected by the mag- netic power, must for the same reason believe that all mag- netic phenomena whatever are sorcery, and the work of tho devil.
'' Magnetism is an unknown property of a heavenly nature ; very much resembling the inliuence of the stars, and not at ail restrained by any boundaries of space. He, therefore, who avails himself of a magnetic means undertakes a God- pleasing business, v.hich has in both worlds, by one order and in equal degree, the same conductor. Therefore, even the relics have a greater power when they are carried about and touched ; as it is necessary to carry the magnet, to rub it, or touch it that it, may attract" (p. 712.)
" That which Paracelsus has done is therefore far from being evil. Por he has placed aloft magnetism, which was un- known to the ancients, as an actuality indispensable to the enquiry into things and a fundamental study of nature ; has placed it aloft as the most enlighteniug and fruitful of sciences, when it had in all schools been laid aside as utterly barren. He is, therefore, to be considered the monarch who has dragged forth all the secrets of all his predecessors, and we must value him highly, if we will not, as ignorant judges, join with haters of all good deeds in slandering him.
" Every createil being possesses his own celestial power, and is allied to heaven. Therefore, it is no wonder if the astral spirits of men show themselves after death still wan- dering about. The outward man is animal, and yet, not- withstanding, the true image of God. K, therefore, God acts througli a hint or a word, man must be able to do the same, if he be God's true image. This is not alone the property of God — the devil, too, though the most aban- doned of beings, moves by a mere will bodies from their place. This original power must, therefore, belong to the inner man, if he will represent the spirit of God, and not of a frivolous being. And if we call tliis a magic power, the uniostructed only can be terrified by the expression. But if you prefer it, you can call it a spiritual power, (spirituale robur vocitaveris). About the name I do net trouble myself; but I am accustomed to contemplate the thing itself as near as I can. There is, therefore, such a
TAX nEL]VIOXT ON MAGIC POWEE. 215
magic power in the inner man. But as there exists a certain relationship between the inner and the outer man, this strength must be dithised through the whole man, only that it is more active in the soul than in the body" (1. c. p. 720).
" This magic power of man, which thus can operate externally, lies, as it were, hidden in the inner man. It sleeps and acts, without being awakened, like one drunken in us daily. This magical wisdom and strength thus sleeps, but by a mere suggestion is roused into activity, and becomes more living the more the outer man of the flesh and the darkness is repressed. "While, however, that outward man reposes in sleep, dreams sometimes of a prophetic nature come, and Grod is on that account fre- quently nearer to man in sleep than in waking" (I.e. p. 722).
" Therefore, all our contemplations, prayers, watches and fastings, all the castigations of our bodies, tend to the repression of the power of the flesh, and to maintain that divine and living spirit-strength in activity ; and, therefore, should we praise God, who only in the spirit, that is, in the innermost heart of man, can be worshipped ; and this, I say, the- Cabbalistic art eftects ; it brings back to the soul that magical yet natural strength which like a startled sleep had left it."
" This natural strength is tlu'ough sin gone to sleep in us, and it is necessary that it should be awoke up again. This may be eflected either through the illumination of the Holy Ghost, or man can, through Cabbalistic art, procure it for himself at pleasure. These may be called goldmakers, but their guide is the spirit of God himself."
" This strength, I have said, is also in the outer man ; that is, in flesh and blood. Nay, not only in the outer man, but to a degree also in the animals, and perhaps in all other things, as all things in the universe stand in a relation to each other ; or at least God is in all things, as the ancients have observed with a worthy correctness. It is necessary that the magic strength should be awakened in the outer as well as in the inner man ; but the devil has power only to awake what is in the outer man : in the inner, in the bottom of the soul, is that kingdom of God to which no created thing has entrance" (p. 725).
24(> HISTORY OF MAGIC.
'• I have also f^irther taiigiit tliat between the spiritual powers there is au interchange ; and, finally, I have endea- voured to show that man rides the ph_Ysieal creatures through liis natural magic, and can use the strength of other things.
'■' The magnetism of magnets, and of all other lifeless tilings, occurs through the natural feeling of accordance.
*■ Fiiiallv, magical power is, as it were, separated from i'ho body, which is put in motion by the inner power of the soul ; whence the miglitiest events, the deepest impressions^ Ttiid the most decisive effects proceed.
" I have hitherto avoided revealing the great secret, that tlie strength lies concealed in man, merely through the sug- gestion and power of the imagination to work outwardly, nnd to impress this strength on others, which then continues of itself, and operates on the remotest objects. Through this secret alone will all receive its true illumination, — all that has hitherto been brought together laboriously of the ideal being out of the spirit — all that has been said of the mag- netism of all things — of the strength of the human soul — of the magic of man, and of his dominion over the phvsical v.-orld" (p. 731).
" When, therefore, this peculiar magical power of man is f-liOwn to be a natural one, it was hitherto an absurd tiling to believe that the devil tlirough its agency effected his own ends ; tha.t the devil in his fall had retained that magical function by which merely with a suggestion he could accom- plish what he pleased, tliis being a natural gift of his own ; and that this equally natural endowment of man was taken from him and conferred on the devil, the most despised of all creatures. Open then your eyes ; the devil has hitherto in your excessive ignorance been exalted to great glory, while you, so to say, have offered to him the incense and dignity of fame, at the same time robbing yourselves of your natural advantage and giving it to him."
" I have also said the magical power of man sleeps, and needs to be awakened ; which always remains true, if the object on which men will operate be not of itself already too much disposed to it; if its inner imaginative strength be not utterly opposed to the strength of the operator ; or if the suffering part be not equally strong, or even stronger than the operative one" (p. 732).
VAX HELMOXT OK" MAGNETIC PHENOMENA. 2i7
^ " See, tlieii, that is a Christian philosophy, and not the madness of the heathen, or idle dreams ! Take lieed in future, I say unto thee, that thou dost not compel me again to become a judge, and to decide that thou in thy decision wast too hasty."
These are all the words of Yan Helmont himself, which I hare literally translated, without making a single observa- tion ; they, indeed, being so clear of themselves that they by no means required it.
In another place he says : — " In the pit of the stomach there is a more powerful sensation than even in the eye, or in the fingers. The stomach often will not tolerate a hand to be laid upon it, because there is there the most acute and positive feehng, which at other times is only perceived in the fingers."
In the rest of his ^Titings you find admirable thoughts, and excellent illustrations of magnetism, and particularly in his " I)e magna virtute rerum et verborum," and his book " De lampedsD vitae."
Yan Helmont sought the explanation of magnetic pheno- mena in some kind of sympathy, by which certain things and influences were transferred to others. As a proof of this sympathy in all things, he says that, amongst other things, it is shown by the fact that wine ferments, works, and is thrown into agitation in spring when the vine begins to blossom. But the question is whether this well-known fer- mentation is not rather to be attributed to the general re- quickening nature in all things which awakes a new life, and which is the most easily observable in active and readily fermenting fluids ? Beer, for instance, displays a still more vivid fermentation, though it cannot be because the barley is then in bloom. The hops and the barley, which indeed do bloom, but not at that period, cannot, I think, be brought into the account.
Amongst the facts of sympathetic influence men- tioned by Yan Helmont, the following particularly deserve notice: "I know an herb," he says, " of an extraordi- nary nature. "VYarm it whilst thou crushest it in thy hand ; then take the hand of another, and hold it till it is warm ; and this person will have a great liking for thee for several days." He made this experiment
2iS HISTOET OF MAGIC.
witli a strange dog, on wliicli the dog quitted its mistress and followed ; him and this he slio^ved before a number of witnesses. Another example related by him is of a lady witli the gout, who had always an attack of the complaint whenever she sat down upon a seat on which her brother, ■who had been dead for five years, used to sit.
Van Helmont says, in his description of the nature of magnetism : — ''• The means by which this secret property enables one person to affect another mutually, is the Mag- 2s'ALE MAGxrit, Called the great magic play, though Para- celsus uses invariably the word Magxale. But this is not a physical substance, which we inspissate, measure, and weigh, but it is an ethereal spirit, pure, living, which pervades all things, and moves the mass of the universe."
" It gives wonderful revelations through certain ecstasies, which the inner man experiences ; the outer man also, or the animal, may receive revelations, if the imagination be exalted. Many examples prove this.
"' Eefore the fall of man, his soul had an inborn wisdom, and a prophetic gift of an extraordinary power. These capacities the soul still possesses ; and if they are not visible, it is because of the w.^nj sensual obstructions which they encounter. Especially in sleep are men often enlightened by this supernatural light, since they are not then, as in the ■waking state, so much repressed by the attractions of sense.'
" That inward wisdom man has lost, to a certain degree, through the wcrldiy knowledge which he acquired by eating the forbidden fruit ; and he is now placed in the lower condition of beir>g confined to the movements and guidance of the body. Paracelsus says on this head — ' As they came out of Paradise, they vrere as they never had been before ; and they then perceived what the world was. They then perceived the influence of the moon, of Mars, Jupiter, and every star in heaven.' Put these magic powers again awoke, and man desired also that wisdom and the capacity for operating beyond himself. And in this consists pure primeval magic ; not in superstitious practices and vain ceremonies, which the devil, never idle in destroying what is good, has introduced. The spirit is everywhere diffused; and the spirit is the medium of magnetism;
VAX nEL:\[ONT ox THE "WILL. 249
not the spirits of heaven and of liell, but the spirit of man, which is concealed in him as the fire is concealed in the flint. Tlie human will makes itself master of a portion of its spirit of life, which becomes a connecting property between the corporeal and the incorporeal, and diffuses itself like the light."
Yan Helmont, after he relates the fact tliat a pregnant woman, frightened by some circumstance, stamped this image of terror on the unborn child, explains this truth also according to his theory. " The imaginative power of a woman, vividly excited, produces an idea, which is the con- necting medium between the body and spirit. This trans- fers itself to the being with which the woman stands in the most immediate relation, and impresses upon it that image which the most agitated herself."
Van Helmont asserts further, that many herbs acquire from the imagination of those who gather them an extraordinary power, ^ay, he goes farther, and says that, through certain simple and easy manipulations, a man may, if he will, con- vert a common needle into a magnetic one, and that these same manipulations arc ineffectual if they are not accom- panied by the will. A hint that a man must most espe- cially attend to the first preparation of the needle, if he will produce the phenomena of the attracting and repelling power in it, which it seems he understood better than we, perhaps, now-a-days give him credit for.
The writings of Yan Helmont contain some extremely remarkable facts concerning the power of the will in the state of ecstasy, which Deleuze has collected into two chapters of the " Bibliotheque du Magn. animal."
" The will," says Yan Helmont, (the human Bias, bias hu7iianwn) " is the first of all powers. For through the will of the Creator all things were made, and put in motion. In man the will is the fundamental cause of his movements. The will is the property of all spiritual beings, and displays itself in them tlie more actively the more tliey are freed from matter ; the strength of their activity demonstrates the purity of spirits.
" The infinite power of the will in the Creator of all things is also firmly fixed in the created being, and is more or less obstructed by matter. Tlie ideas thus clothed
250 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
Avitli physical nature operate also in a natural, that is, phy- sical manner, on the living creature, through the means of the life-activit3^ Thev operate more or less, according to the will of the operator, and their activity may also he repelled hy the will of those acted upon. A magician Avill thus operate more strongly on a weak nature than on a strong one, because the power of operatiiig through the will has bounds, and others can oppose it more or less according to their strength."
Van Helmont corroborates still further the mutual influ- ence of men on animals, and vice versa, by statmgtliat men by looking steadfastly at them (oculis intentis) for a quarter of an hour may cause their death ; which Eousseau confirms from his own experience in Egypt and the East, as having killed several toads in this manner. But when he at last tried this at Lyons, the toad, finding it could not escape from his eye, turned round, blew itself up, and stared at him so fiercely, without moving its eyes, that a weakness came over him even to fainting, and he was for some time thought to be dead. He was recovered, however, by treacle and the powder of vipers.
It is also very remarkable what Yan Helmont says of the phenomena which appear in certain men of themselves, or through an artistic treatment.
He first relates a singular story of one of his sleep- walking school-comrades, who exerj night took the key, unlocked the garden door, and walked in the garden. Van Helmont hid the key, but the sleep-walker fetched it from the concealed place without any difficulty.
He relates an extraordinary example in his own person of the transference of a sense to the pit of the stomach ; which is the more extraordinary, as he had a perfect remem- brance of what took place after being in a complete state of clairvoyance.
In order to make a medical experiment on poisonous plants, A^an Helmont prepared the root of aconite, and tasted it with the point of the tongue, without swallowing any of it. He himself says : — " Immediately my head seemed tied tightly with a string, and soon after there hap- pened to me a singular circumstance such as I had never before experienced. I observed with astonishment that I
VAX HELMO^'T AXD TnE ACONITE. 2oI
no longer felt and thought with the head, but with the region of the stomach, as if consciousness had now taken up its scat in the stomach. Terrified by this ur usual phe- nomenon, I asked myself and inquired into myself carefully ; but I only became the more convinced that my power of per- ception was become greater and more comprehensive. This intellectual clearness was associated with great pleasure. I did not sleep, nor did I dream ; I was perfectly sober ; and my liealtli was perfect. I had occasionally had ecstasies, but these had nothing in common with this condition of the stomach in Wiiich it thought arid felt, and almost excluded all co-operation of the head. In the meantime my friends were troubled with the fear that I miglit go mad. But my faith in God, and my submission to His will, soon dissipated this fear. This state continued for two hours, after which I had some dizziness. I afterwards frequently tasted of the aconite, but I never again could reproduce these sen- sations" (Van Helmont, Demens idea.)
From this extraordinary phenomenon, A'an Helmont con- cludes that the soul is not necessarily fettered to one organ or another of the body, and that it can, like a permeating light, dift'nse itself through all, without having any medium necessary. " The sun-tissue in the region of the stomach," lie says, "is the chief seat and essential organ of the soul. There is the genuine seat of feeling, as in the head is that of memory. The proper rellection, the compariso]i of the past ai]d the future, the inquiry into circumstances, — these are the f mictions of the head ; but the rays are sent by the soul from the centre, the region of the stomach. The isolated recognitions of the future, and that which is inde- pendent of time and place, belong solely and alone to the central hearth of the region of the stomach.
" jS'otwithstauding this, however, the feeling soul is not enclosed in the stomach as iu a bag, or as the corn in an ear ; she has only there her chief seat. And thence proceed the light and warmth which diftuse themselves through the whole body ; from thence the power of life which prevails iu all the organs."
After this crisis produced by the aconite, liis conscious- ness received a totally new activity, and the time of sleep, as he himself says, was no longer lost to him. " Since then,"
-'OZ niSTOET OF MAGIC.
lie says, " I have dreams wLicli enlighten me, and in which my spirit rejoices in its capacities and my judgment in its strength. This caused that, in the words of the Psalmist, I conceived how ' night unto night shows wisdom.' "
I now give, finally, what Van Helmont says of the inward light of the soul : — " AYhen God created the human soul, he imparted to her essential and original knowledge. The soul is the mirror of the universe, and stands in rela- tionship to all living things. She is illuminated by an inward light ; but the tempest of passions, the multitude of sensual impressions, the dissipations, darken this light, whose glory only diftuses itself when it burns alone, and all is peace and harmony within us. When we know ourselves to be separated from all outward influences, and desire only to be guided by this universal light, then only do we find in ourselves pure and certain knowledge. In this state of concentration, the soul analyses all objects on which her attention rests. She can unite herself with them, penetrate through their substance, penetrating even to God himself, and feeling Him in the most important truths."
From all these observations, and from many other passages in his writings, it is clear that Van Helmont regards the science of medicine in a m.agnetic light, and practised it as such. His presence was frequently sufficient, according to his statement, to cure the sick. Through his will he operated not only on men, but even imparted through it a peculiar strength to medicines, and relied more on divine help which supported his spirit, without having sometimes recourse to any physical means.
He believed that human wisdom, which consisted merely in uncertain controversies, and an eternal nourishing of pride, was insufficient to afi'ord help to suffering humanity ; that all medical knowledge whatever was far indeed from that which God conferred on those whom he had chosen as the instruments of his mercy for the worlving out the heal- ing of pains and disasters. He believed that we may pro- perly use the means which the experience of many ages has taught us ; and above all things should love actuate all our endeavours.
The description of the qualities of a physician is truly
HEXRY C0KNELIU3 AGETPPA. 253
the picture of a genuine magnetic and biblical doctor, but of which we, alas, have only a few examples.
" The physician chosen of God," he says (Van Helmont, Tumulis pestis), " is accompanied by many signs and wonders for the schools. He will give the honour to God, as he employs his gifts to the assuaging the sufferings of his neighbour. Compassion will be his guide. His heart will possess truth, and his intellect science. Love will be his sister ; and the truth of the Lord will illumine his path. He will invoke the grace of God, and he will not be over- come by the desire of gain. For the Lord is rich and bountiful, and pays a hundredfold in heaped measure. He will make his labour fruitful, and he will clothe his hands with blessings. He will fill his mouth with comfort, and His word will be a trumpet before which diseases will fly. His footsteps wdll bring prosperity, and siclaiess will flee before his face, as snow melts in a summer morn. Health will follow him. These are the testimonies of the Lord to those healers whom he has chosen, — this is the blessedness of those who pursue the way of kindness ; and the Holy Spirit will, moreover, enlighten them as the Comforter."
HEXEY COEXELIUS AGEIPPA, OF EETTESHEIM.
Besides the chief disciples of Van Helmont, the principal advancers of the doctrines of Paracelsus in Germany were the following : John Eeuchlin, who rested his theosophic doctrines pre-eminently on the Bible, and, therefore, wrote his most remarkable Avork, on the Power of the Word (De verbo mirifico, etc.) John Trithemius, Abbot of JSponheim, Leonhard Thurneysser, of Thurn, a popular astro- loger and magician at more than one German court ; Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of Eettesheim. This last had written a remarkable book (De occidta philosophia), in which not only the doctrines of the Cabbalists but also peculiar and most excellent ideas of his own are contained, which, notwithstanding some absurdities, must be highly valuable in magnetic science, and of which, therefore, I shall quote a iew. Agrippa occupied himself priu-
254 niSTOiiY or magic.
cipally with the three Paracelsiau words — the sidereal, the elementary, and the spiritual.
I will here give a condensed epitome of his theory from Sprengel's History of Medicine. " As in the original world all things are in all, so in the physical world is equally every one and one in all (1. c. lib. i. c. 8). Out of every body pro- ceed images, indivisible substances, which diffuse themselves through infinite space. Therefore bodies can operate on others at the most remote distances, and, on that account, a man is in a condition to impart his thoughts to another man who 23 hundreds of miles awa}'" (Sprengel's History of Medi- cine, part 2nd, p. 267.)
" Matter is dead and inert, and without power to act ; it receives streugth and form from the ideas, that is, from nature, which have of themselves no bodies and no exten- sion, but come from God into matter. Everything, however, according to Plato and the Platonists, is of divine origin (e mente divini quid), and on that account God is contained in all things. The stars consist equally of the elements of earthly bodies, and, therefore, the ideas (powers, nature) attract each other. The powers have their foundation first in the ideas, in the spiritual, tlien in the harmony of the heavens, and, finally, in the elements of bodies, which are in accordance with the sidereal ideas. The operations of this world have their foundation partly in the substantial forms of bodies, partly in the powers of heaven, partly in spiritual things, and, nltimately, in the primal forms of the original image. Influences only go fortli through the Jielp of the spirit ; but this spirit is difi-used through the whole universe, and is in full accord with the human spirit. Through the sympathy of similar, and the antipathy of dissimilar things, all creation hangs together ; the things of a particular world within itself, as well as with the con- genial things of another world."
Agrippa speaks in a very extraordinary manner of the moral means which a man must employ in order to procure the necessary insights and knowledge.
"The magician who will acquire supernatural powers must possess faith, love, and hope.
" In all things," he says further, '•' there is a secret power concealed, and thence come the miraculous powers of magic."
IIEXRY COEXELIUS AGMPPA. 2o5
As an example, he introduces the magnet \vhich attracts iron to it, and yet a diamond can deprive this magnet of its strength. " In every stone and plant there is a wonderful power and activity, but much greater and more wonderful is that of the stars."
f He gives another example of the secret magical power, in everything consorting with its like, and in its appropriating and assimilating all things to itself.
" For everything living and acting, so soon as it becor.^.es living, does not endeavour to go backwards, but forwards ; that is, does not assimilate itself to the lower, but en- deavours to assimilate the lower to itself, as is obviously shown by animals, which do not convert their food into stone or plant, but convert the herb into flesh, and, more- over, into sensitive flesh" (in carnem sensibilem).
He speaks thus of the influence of the stars : — " It is clear that all the low are subject to the higher ; that is, the earthly depends on tlie stellar ; but both are in a manner made kindred (quodammodo sibi invicem insunt). As the liighest in the lowest, and the lowest in the highest, so there is in heaven the earthly and on the earth the heavenly ; in both, liowever, clothed in their own manner. Thus we say that there are here sun-life and moon-life, (responding to the sun and moon) in which the sun and the moon es- pecially reveal their strength." He gives examples of this in various things, even in the human body and its diflerent intestines.
From these agreements of the stars, and of their mutual properties, he deduces, as a direct consequence, the particular agreement of individual things here, as the act of increasing or diminishing the eflect of congenial things on each other in the earth." " If thou wistest from any particular part of the world to receive the power of a particular star, thou must use tlie means which stand in a particular relation to this star, and tliou wilt experience its influence (Agrippa, c. 33, 3-l!). If thou wilt, for example, draw the power of the sun to thee, use what is of a solar nature, metals, stones,''or animals, but always, and best of all, such things as stand in a higher rank."
This doctrine of the power of the word is given at con- siderable length, lie also ascribes to numbers a particular
256 IIISTOEY or ilAGIC.
activity, wLicli lie carries sometimes not merely to an unwise but even to an absurd extent. Piually, be asserts, in order to demonstrate the mutual influence of stars and of all things, that he believes the heavens and the heavenly bodies to be ensouled, since from no purely material body can action proceed. You see that Agrippa has, in general, very just ideas ; but following these ideas far too passionately, he loses himself in particulars, and in a labyrinth of fables, at the same time that his total separation of spirit from matter, which he supposes to be utterly dead, is by no means philosophical.
EOBEET PLUDD.
In England, Eobert Pludd was the most distinguished of the disciples of Paracelsus.
I do not take Pludd to be properly one of those conse- crated theosophists, who endeavour to draw all wisdom from the eternal fountain of light : but, notwithstanding this, he was a very profound enquirer, as his book proves, (" Philosophia mosaica, in qua sapientia et scientia creatonis explicantur, auctore Eob. Pludd, Gonda*, 1638,) in which the great aim is to explain creation on principles of natural philosophy. As he enters in it upon the subject of mag- netic cures, we will take note of some of his views.
He considers all things under certain modifications to proceed from one primaeval being. The soul is a portion of this primaeval being, whicli he calls " principiam universale catholicum." Thence comes the kinship of all souls who have all their origin in this original soul as their central point.
His inquiries into the nature of sympathies and an- tipathies, and into the power of the magnet, are extensive. He explains the action of these in this manner, that the emanations of this fine spirit take various directions. In sympathy the emanations proceed from the centre to the circumference ; in antipathy from the circumference to the centre. The power and influence of the stars is "with him a chief doctrine, and that every body has its