Book xviii.

I have spoken more fully of these illuminations in a historical and scientific point of view in my work on " Magnetism in relation to Nature and Keligion." More than two hundred years ago, Bartholin delivered an in- teresting account of the illuminations of men and animals. "We shall, as we proceed, hear frequently of similar appear- ances, and must confess that we are convinced that these lights, if not actual electrical lights, are and remain always subjective phenomena of an ecstatic condition, and are one in principle, though shaped according to the popular ideas of the time: so that to the oracle-pronouncing Greek appears the winged Hermes, the luminous Apollo, or Minerva, " the heavenly goddess of splendour who scatters the darkness," as the genius ; while to the modern somnambule it appears as an angel, a saint, or the holy mother.
The conditions of human nature remain the same, but cir- cumstances are different, and vary with time and place. The conditions conceal themselves, but the circumstances come forth to the light, which occasion a difierence in the illumina^ tion, and in the significance of it, which can be only properly interpreted when we go down to the cause of the sul3Ject state.
"We think now that by our comparison of the ancient facts of divination, sorcery, and the circumstances attend- ing the delivery of the oracles, with the facts of modern science and observation, we have solved many ancient riddles. "We believe that we have adduced sufficient evidence that magic was contained in the ancient mytho- logies ; that mythology in many respects only receives its
72 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
true interpretation from the point of view afforded by the' natural philosophers, because there were not only historical and religious, but also philosophical enigmas, involved in these systems. "We have quoted the assurance of Strabo, that " the ancients concealed their physical views of things in enigmas, and their scientific observations in myths." As a concluding justification of our attempts in this respect, we may quote the words of a distinguished natural philoso- pher, as it regards mythology : —
" It is very striking, that in all ages all people have clothed the ideas of their dreams in the same imagery. It may, therefore, be asked, whether that language which now occupies so low a place in the estimation of men, be not the actually waking language of the higher regions, while we, awake as we fancy ourselves, may not be sunk in a sleep of many thousand years, or at least in the echo of their dreams, and only intelligibly catch a few dim words of that language of Grod, as sleepers do scattered expressions from the loud conversation of those around them." — Schubert's Symbolism of Dreams.
" If we do not understand the pictorial style of the ancients, it is clear that we are become estranged to the region in which that pictorial language was formed. Since it constitutes the entire mode of expression of the most ancient times, and arose simultaneously with those peoples, so are all myths poetic-symbolic-metaphoric inspirations of a transcendent material power of nature, or the physical incarnation of an infinite spirit." — Steinbeck, The Poet as Seer.
" It is possible that the idea of unconsciousness in the formation of myths may appear to many dark, or even magical, for no other reason than that the mythic creative power has no analogy in our present modes of thought ; but will not history recognise the extraordinary, where free inquiry leads unquestionably to it ?" — Ottfr. Miiller's Prolegomena.
TUB MAGIC or THE GEEMJLNS. 73
FOURTH SECTION
THE MAGIC OF THE GEEMANS.
As we now arrive at tlie third and last period of tae history of magic, I recall the recollection of the reader to that part of the work in which I endeavonred to show how in the three chief periods, the Oriental, the Greco-Eoman, and the German, magic- shaped itself characteristically according to the natural spirit of the people ; how the transit and the diffusion of it gradually took place, and the spiritual life of the German people struck its roots into the Greco-Eoman element, and by its peculiar and powerful individual strength elaborated the manifold collected materials in lasting fermentation into a new and living impulse. It was shown how the German people in the infancy of its arising and of its first development in the newly-conquered lands, received so many-sided an excite- ment, and through the gradual decline of the Eoman ascendancy not only appropriated its intellectual acquisi- tions, but succeeded to the educational element of the Arabs ; to which advantages the Alexandrine school also added a particularly important influence both on the philosophical direction of mind and on the new religious doctrines ; so that it becomes very intelligible how magic in Germany became as multifarious in its growth and progress, as it had shown itself in all forms of the Oriental and Greco-Eoman times, and yet in a pre-eminently religious and Christian dress. As Christianity acquired root and growth in the Germanic race earlier than in all others, and as Christianity became a very important tui-ning point for the modification
74 HISTOBT OF MAGIC.
of magic, the history of magic at this period is insepar- able from the development of Christianity.
The mythologic process closed with the Grecian period, as Schelling has beautifully shown, and Christianity then became the central point of history. Nor has Christianity yet reached its full accomplishment ; it is in the process of its growth and the diffusion of its light, which proceeded from Christ, the focus of all history, into which all individual rays, and all that the wise have sought out, collect them- selves as a principle, that now the mystery may be un- folded to babes and sucklings, and the word of truth may be preached. From Christ emanated the light of the eternal word, which, encompassing the whole world, shall spread itself over all people, as the one happiness-producing idea, for the salvation of the whole race, and in which every nation and every individual must educate themselves, and come to a clear and perfect consciousness. The mystic hovering in a darkling feeling shall become purified and comprehensible, and faith be understood. Christ himself says, " JS'othing is hidden that shall not be revealed ; what I say unto you in the darkness shall be proclaimed in the light and on the house-tops."
Universal history not only demonstrates an advance of the human race in civilisation, but still more in the deve- lopment of different intellectual powers in all directions, in which the primeval ideas of truth and goodness, of beauty and of truth, come forth from the subjective ground into the objective revelation. The mightiest nations are always those who in a general development most purely and per- fectly manifest a peculiar spirit, or the substance of some particular idea. People who have not impressed upon them these primeval ideas in a permanent form, are destitute of history, and disappear like shadows on the arena of the world. Thus we have only three historical ancestors from whom we draw our history of magic — the Oriental, the Greco-Roman, and the German. These people ha^^e raised themselves above all others by their intellectual stamina, and with a characteristic strength, and have planted on a certain elevation of development the focus of an advanced knowledge, which can never more vanish from history, but must for ever pass on to a fresh posterity, and be again
CHRISTIANITY AJiD GEEMANITT. 75
brought forward by it, but only in a new form, and more varied and entwined with the roots of its peculiar strength of life. " With firm pace, like a procession of the dynasties of a kingdom, history now marches forward along a chain of nations, each of which seizes on the dominion of the world in an ever-ascending power, and retains it for a longer dura- tion, placing itself in the van of the intellectual world till it is pushed aside by another ; thus extending from the Assyrians to the Germans, the people of the present world- period, in whom the unity again appears to divaricate in a multitude of states, amongst whom now these now those preponderate, but who altogether constitute a closely- woven system, and gravitate towards an invisible point, and are governed by the laws of universal development.'* — C. E. Haug's General History.
It is a fact in the history of the world, that with the advent of Christ the Germans first appeared on the arena of the world — a circumstance of such deep moment, that we do not perfectly understand Germanity if we do not include a knowledge of this coincidence. For the complete establishment of the divine idea in the development of humanity, it is necessary to presuppose at once Christianity and Germanity. Germanity, in fact, has an organisation more capable of the reception of Christianity than any other people. Truly, the good seed might have fallen into rough and uncultivated ground, where after a long slumber it might have put forth wretched and uncertain foliage, — the frivolously-ideal Greek, and the able-bodied, strong-limbed Roman, having outlived their periods, without being able rightly to comprehend the deep, the whole man-pervading doctrine of Christ. For this the German people was destined, which now possesses the post of ruling the world. Our present subject stands in close connection with this, as will soon be made apparent.
In the preceding mythological observations we have arrived at the result, that a natural philosophy excluding all secret practice and teaching was first made possible by the Christian religion with its universality of love for man, and its conflict against any contempt of our fellow- creatures. For that purpose, the great book written for aU, the totality of nature, was thrown open, an-d
76 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
Christianity was made tlie religion of the world, not merely for the perfect development of all the primeval ideas of the soul, but also for the opening up of nature, and for the right use of her powers. The glory of genuine Christianity consists in this, that, considered in relation to other religions, it does not suffer itself to be separated from culture and science, from the accomplishment of the intellect and from natural philosophy. On that account the fii'st apostles addressed themselves only to such people as possessed the necessary degree of cultivation for the comprehension of the higher truths ; to whom they might say, not in vain : " Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." Christ himself, as we have seen above, appeared in a particular time, and amongst a parti- cular people, in order to reveal the word of the Father — the bringing back of a sinful race. As an earlier appear- ance of Christ would have failed of its grand object — to awaken the universal love of mankind, — a later appearance would have been a delay, since the darkening and perversion of the human spirit had reached its highest point, and nature, instead of a dwelling-place and an instrument of the spirit, was become to men a dungeon, as to the beasts without understanding ; and, as St. Paul says, " Howbeit, then, when ye knew not Grod, all did service to them which by nature are no gods" (Galatians, iv. 8).
When the human spirit possessed no higher wisdom than the earthly and the human, than that which reason and the light of nature gave it, nature was to it a sealed book — a Babel. Man had wholly fallen from his empire ; his sense and language were confused ; no consciousness of the real object of life remained to him, nor of the true use of means. Man was blind, and deaf, and lame, as it regarded the king- dom of nature. He would cKmb, by the tower of sorcery, up to heaven, and the eye met only a delusive light ; out of all objects glared demoniac visages ; the lute of nature gave forth voices of condemnation, filling the heart with fear and terror, despair and madness, instead of peace, rest, and truth ; and where the enterprising hand seized on the elements to compel the powers of nature to service, the attempt was defeated in the conflict, or totally repelled.
" But the soul of the old Adam had lusted after the lord-
THE MAGIC OF THE GERMATs^S. 77
sliip of outer rule, and his will was sundered from the unity of God, and carried away in the dominion of this world ; so that this was converted into a monstrosity. The true spirit withered ; the light of God was extinguished ; and the divine idea became benumbed and dead in him. To this spirit now came Jesus ; and as he assumed human nature to restore it, he brought back again the light into the darkness. In this light stands the soul again in original fatherland, as in her first days, when the spirit of God 'WTOught in her. She stands there in vision, and may inquire into all things ; and she understands the language of nature, and works with her strength. In delusion — that of Adam — there is no perfection; the spirit of God in His Son must be the guide, otherwise he stands in an outward mystery, as in the outward heaven of the stars, but not in the divine magic school, which consists only in a simple, child -like spirit. The outward guide — theoretic reason — works only in a glass ; but the inner sense, directed of God, shines into the soul ; and, therefore, the choice stands with God : he who com- prehends the heavenly school will become a Magus — a creator out of self-knowledge — without wearisome running ; and even if he must greatly exert himself, yet is he penetrated by God, and will be impelled by the Holy Spirit." — Jacob Bohme.
To all nations before Christ the world was enchanted. Through Christianity will she become disenchanted, and the true magic be restored. Eeligion amongst the ancients had degenerated into a worship of the stars, and the cosmic powers were idolised. Even amongst the Jews revelation took place through symbols and through the elements of nature. The true reconciliation of deeply-fallen humanity with God ; the release of the spirit from the bonds of nature ; the separation of the sensual from the intellectual, the animal from the divine, appearance from reality; the ideas of truth and goodness, of right and virtue, of motive, freedom, and immortality, were first made possible through the pure doctrine of Christianity. But although by obedience to, and true faith in, the words of Christ, any one may enter with him "to-day" into Paradise; yet the' sub- stance of the faith can only become the possession of entire
78 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
humanity, by being expanded to its full extent in the course of time. Now, as Grermanity seems especially designed to realise and to carry out Christianity to that full extent, it is easy to perceive that in the footsteps of the G-reco- E-oman cultivation the first beginnings everywhere must imperfectly succeed; and that thus magic amongst the ancient Germans was of such a kind, that you might say with PHny, not only of the pagan G-ermans, but of the Christian ones, — " Magiam attonite celebrant tantis csere- moniis, et eam dedisse Persis videre possit." The belief in sorcery amongst the northern nations was, moreover, universal ; and the scientific endeavour to make intelligible the ancient gods and the demon-life ; to separate the opera- tions of the powers of nature from those of the spirit ; to divide the inner existence of religion from hypocrisy and mere ceremonies, could only succeed slowly and partially. The idea of angels and devils being given by the Christian religion, and the nature of ecstasy and the psychological fundamental activity of the soul being as little understood as the mysterious operation of the powers of nature, espe- cially in pathological circumstances; supernatural action of the soul, therefore, in aU unusual phenomena, was considered as something settled, or as if, on the other hand, nature was entirely dead, and only used as the material and instrument of superhuman powers. It must have been very dif&cult for the few more profound in- quirers and material observers to operate on the universal prejudice, and to enlighten ignorance, which was only possible by slow degrees, and by this means, that with the critical examination of the Scriptures as to religion and spiritual philosophy, the inquiries into, and the fathoming of nature and her powers was at the same time undertaken, and, spite of all opposing influences, carried through, — a process to which Christianity itself had given the occasion. For one of the most wayward fixed ideas of pagan sorcery was through Christianity already set aside; the belief, namely, that the power of the gods might be restrained by nature and by forces independent of themselves ; a feature which is characteristic of the Greeks and Eoraans, as in the cases of Medea, Circe, Erectho, Canidia, mentioned by Horace,
THE MAGIC OF THE GERMATfS. 79
all of whom exerted a command over the might of the gods, over the stars and the fates of men, and who were fully believed in by the people, and celebrated by the poets.
The propensity to search the nature of things to the very bottom is in no people so decided as in the German. The Grerman seizes on the smallest as on the greatest things — the natural or the spiritual — with equal zeal, and pursues it with indefatigable industry. He follows the trace of appear- ances ; and where not the smallest reward is to be expected, he still pursues the way which leads to discovery. With Christianity, descends to the German race also the echo and the character of the cultivation of the two historical direc- tions of mind, — the elder Oriental idealism, and the later Greco-Eoman realism, which we embrace in our conception of the world. These two fundamental views were now transferred especially to the region of German faith in sorcery. What a field for labour lay before them ! to re- concile the opposing principles ; to separate the heathen and the Christian elements ; to comprehend the natural and the divine ; to separate faith from mere knowledge ; and, finally, to discriminate the phenomena of genuine magic from the spectres of the imagination.
The Christian religion is based on the principle of the unity of God. God is the one eternally moral Lord of the spirits, as the Creator of physical nature. The faith in sorcery must, therefore, assume a wholly new and different form, however similar the radical idea and the tendency might remain to the heathen. The idea of Satan as the principle of evil, — as one of the angels originally good, but now fallen from the allegiance of the Creator, — Christianity had received from Judaisiil. This being, endowed with free- will, this prince of darkness, persisting in his error and self- rule, and everywhere establishing evil, and who also in the oriental Parseeism was one of the two original principles, had, according to the Christian idea, lost his dominion after the appearance of Christ ; since the Messiah was he who was, in fact, to crush the head of the subtle serpent. It is, therefore, the triumph of the Messiah that he destroyed the kingdom of the devil, overcame the powers of darkness, and entirely annihilated the influence of the Wicked One over the new-born spirit. " For this end is the Son of God
80 HISTOET or MAGIC.
come into tlie world, tliat he may destroy fhe works of the devil" (I. John, iii. 8). The works of the flesh and of darkness are the sins and departures from the law, because they were done by the heathen and the children of dark- ness. " Who is a wise man and endowed with knowledge amongst you ? Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom" (James, iii. 13). " So let us put ofi" the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, — adultery," etc. (Gralatians, v. 19). "And you, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconcided" (Colossians, i. 21). " Put ofi" the old man and his works. Ey nature are we all incapable of good ; by his natural strength can no man do good works, but they are the fruit of faith, and this is a gift of the Holy Ghost ; and he who has not the faith is dead ; but true faith becomes active through love" (Ephes. ii. 11), etc.
As the idea of Satan thus passed over into Christianity, the deeply-rooted belief in sorcery was possible, and hence was not thoroughly expelled, though Christ had trodden on the head of the serpent. For as the tenacity and, as it were, the indestructibility of the serpent ever returns again, and as the spirit of evil is immortal and maliciously disposed to all the arts of seduction ; thus the faith in sorcery could not be driven out of religion even by the New Testament, though it was unfavourable to it. The conquered but not annihilated god of hell retained at least listeners. The attractions of sensual pleasures and of base deeds, juggling delusions, and injurious acts ; inexpli- cable phenomena beyond the ordinary course of nature ; mysterious diseases, plagues, etc., were attributed, if not to the devil, at least to the influence of demoniac spirits ; and the devil himself came pre-eminently into the ascendancy again through the first ascetics and anchorites; and his kingdom so increased in the opinion of the Christian believers in the course of time, that, in the middle ages, strengthened by a chain of learned maxims and dogmatic sophistries, it was spread through both the high and the low ranks of society ; and by the end of the fifteenth century witchcraft and the black art had attained an
MAGIC AMO:irG THE EARLY CHEISTIAXS. 81
elevation sucli as they never before possessed in history; and a terrible power was ascribed to the devil, while Christianity, with all the weapons of its extended armoury, and TNdth fire and sword, took the field, and no longer felt itself in security, but seemed almost to wander surrounded by a regular demon host.
Before we pass on to the especial observation of magic and of the philosophical views of it amongst the Germans, we must notice the changes in religious faith produced by Christianity, as these showed themselves in the early ages, shaped according to the operation of natural causes. The phenomena of ecstasy arc those particularly which passed with the ideas of the new-Platonism on the divinatory nature of man over into the early Chris- tian philosophy ; and, besides, the pagan elements could not be so easily abandoned, that the reign of demouism should at once and entirely cease. The German Year- Books of Science and Art, by Euge, 1842, contain a critical treatise on the influence of the heathen religion of nature on the early Christian theology, which has besides for us a considerable interest in respect to magic.
Amongst other things it is said, — In the Phrygian re- ligion of nature there were ecstatics, so that some have supposed that we may attribute the origin of Montanism to these ; but this is by no means necessary. Both forms of religion have an enthusiastic character, but the principles in the two are totally different : yes, that of Montanism was essentially rooted in Christianity, and the relationship was only in outward appearance, and in the modulating circumstances of place, nationality, &c. The ancient Phry gian religion expresses itself, as we have seen, in the ascetic and orgiestic manner amongst the people of Asia Minor wrestling and striving in the press of wild forces could not lift them out of sensuality and debauch ; hence their lawless and dissipated festivals. On the other hand, they were by their strict religious doctrines directed to penance for the subjugation of their passions. In the fanatic proceedings of the Montanists we see, indeed, something of the same character, — the same striving of the religious life after phy- sical forms of representation ; but no one need seek satis- faction in an attempted mastery over the dark powei*s
VOL. II. a
tic I : a /
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82 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
of immediate nature througli the ferment of the senses, and in dreams of the impending end of all things, and of the joys of the new Jerusalem, of whose gates the ascetics pro- fessed to be the keepers. The circumstances of fanaticism, the conceptions of it, were different to the Phrygian wor- ship of Cybele ; Montanism had overcome the worship of nature, although there was yet no violent opposition of heathenism and Christianity : for heathenism retired at all points, and the scene of action was modelled anew, as, for instance, those of the Orphic hymns, and the Delphic oracles. Heathenism especially expresses itself in the dual system of philosophy, which keeps asunder the contending forms of the phenomena of spirit, but whose dynamic interwoven powers, not anatomically separated, must be regarded as modest op- ponents. In Montanism there are Jewish and Christian elements, but no longer heathen ones, although the Oriental, Egyptian, and Greek influences are everywhere visible. The mixing, and the thence arising fermentation of the popular spirit, determine the characteristic visions, and the interpre- tation of others resembling them. The ecstasies of the Mon- tanists, however highly pitched, were the lower magnetic som- nambulic appearances, for they were entirely, like the pagan oracles, united with the unconsciousness of the subject ; and the divination of their women, of whom they carried two about with them, was of a very dubious kind, as they prophesied the end of things ; and Maximilla even asserted that no other prophetess would come after her.
The interpretation of the Apostolical writings, especially those of Paul, through their philosophical reasoning, bore with the fathers of the church the impression of the Platonic philosophy and of the new-Platonism. The epixijveia rov toitjtov rfJQ havoiag of Plato (Ion), and the in- terpretation of the ecstatic speech of the Manticer, Timaeus, remind us entirely of the tongue-orator in the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. The divination of Plotinus, Philo- stratus, &c., in the new-Platonism, who in sleep had inter- course with the divine, is of the same kind, so that the Greek influence is everywhere visible in the Christian theories, and, which is the most striking, in the Montanist doctrines. Be- tween the pagan and Christian fonns of phenomena the therapeutics of Plato, to a certain degree, place themselves.
PAULISTS AND MONTATs^ISTS. 83
In the first two centuries, in tlie Paulist period firstly, and in the Montanist period secondly, people continually re- ferred to the internal gifts of prophecy as demonstrated in the modes of revelation of which two parties were the prevailing ones, — those of Paulism and Patrism, or of the Judaic Christianity. The first supported themselves on the im- mediateness of their revelations and visions; the others sought their support in their immediate union with Christ. These views were not without their opponents. Already the Clemen- tines declared the visionary circumstances and the Pauline virraariaLandcnroi^aXv^eiQ as demoniacal effects. According to them knowledge flows from the prophet outwards, and the immediate visions aff'orded to Peter (Matth. xvi. 16) are the types of all genuine announcements of the truth, which are, it is true, the result of supernatural influence, but that Peter only owed his to the eiepye'iv, — power of God. The demoniacal revelations are kvepyovfjiwoL.
The means of producing ecstasies were, for the rest, per- fectly natural; as the smoke of sacrifice, and mysterious ceremonies and preparations, as previously in the oracles, by which in part the natural causes, as in the ascertainment of diseases, were discovered, as among the Clementines, for instance, fanatic phrensy ; and in part they were de- scribed as the immediate operations of God, as in the Pauline vision of the Montanists.
During the decline of the Roman empire, visions increased amazingly, although men thereby acquired a greater terror of pagan idol-worship, because they believed that the idols were inhabited by demons. Thence arose that fearful and general doctrine of the devil, to which partly the belief that the heathen worked their magic effects by the help of the fiends, and to which the ascetics partly gave occasion, who, through their eremitic seclusion and their horror of pollution through the ordinary intercourse with society, maintained internal conflicts with temptations and torment- ing devils. The gnostics generally saw in their transports spirits and souls ; their visions personified themselves in living shapes, and stepped forth on the scene in correct colour and dress, as afterwards in the middle ages, and even at tlie latest period, has occurred again. Also at that time visions frequently a|T[jcarcd while people were awake,
)
84 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
and by a disturbed state of consciousness wbicb all tbe more assumed an appearance of the wonderful, and called to mind supernatural influence, as tbey were accompanied by terrible and cramp-like convulsions.
' It has often been asserted that the oracles ceased at the advent of Christ ; while, on the other hand, the fathers of the church adduced the testimonies of the oracles and sibyls to prove the divinity of the religion of Christ. Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Lactantius, Jerome, Ambrosius, Augustine, St. Clemens of Alexandria, etc. all speak of those prophecies. Irenaeus had divining women, whom he commanded to prophesy. Montan and his disciples reckoned prophe- S3ring as spiritual gifts, and boasted openly of their pro- phetic visions. Irenseus did not contradict them, and Ter- tullian honoured them. He describes (De anima, c. ix.) such a prophetess in the following words : — " There is with us a sister who possesses the gift of prophecy ; she falls usually during divine service on Sunday into ecstasy, in which she has communication with angels and spirits, — yes, sometimes with the Lord himself. She penetrates then into the secrets J of some hearts, and heals others by medicines. The reading of the sacred Scriptures, the singing of hymns, and prayer, give material for her visions, in which she once also described the shape of the human soul." One of the most zealous defenders of divination was Constantino the G-reat, who is said to have delivered a long speech on the truth of the sibyls, which was read in the assembly of the church at Nice. (E. P. Crasset, Dissertation sur les oracles des Sibylles, Paris, 1678.)
THE MAGIC or THE ANCIENT GEKMANS. 85
riRST DIVISION.
THE MAGIC OF THE ANCIENT GEEMANS AND OF THE NOETHEEN NATIONS.
The ancient Gauls and Cymri were classed among the Celts. The Celts, according to Grimm, were driven by the Germans and the northern races from the much wider regions which they originally occupied in Europe, to the western end of it. We shall under that title understand all the north-western nations, since they afterwards either spread themselves all over those countries, or became amalgamated with their in- habitants. All these peoples, as the Gauls, the Spaniards in part, the Britons and Belgians, with the ancient Germans, we will take together, since we speak of no particular my- thology, and of no individual history, and see whether we find any magic amongst them.
In the first place we must remark that it is not believed that any of these people derived their magic from the ^Romans. On the contrary, they had their own religious and magic customs long before the invasion of their countries by the Eomans ; they never mingled their customs with those of the Romans ; on which subject I refer to Grimm's German Mythology, which gives the most striking evidence of the authenticity of the northern doc- trines, and their original relationship to the Germans. The grand accordance of all the northern nations in poetry, re- ligion, and speech, shows that their mythology is genuine ; and Grimm, moreover, proves in a double manner that the northern mythology being genuine, consequently that of the German is so too ; that the German mythology is old, — consequently, also, the northern.
Pliny and Tacitus both lived in these countries before the
86 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
invasion of the Eomans ; and although they described the magic of these people after the E-omans came in, this is cer- tain, that these nations in so short a time had not received the manners and customs of the Eomans ; that they burned •with furious hate against them ; that they resisted them for centuries, would not learn their lano:uao:e, were forsworn enemies of the Eomans, and were never, especially the Germans, subjected to their yoke by them. We find here, indeed, customs which, from the simplicity of these people, must naturally have descended from them, as we find them everywhere; but Eoman and Glreek temples of ^sculapius and Apollo we find nowhere ; and the names of the gods which Tacitus names amongst the ancient Germans are not German, but are merely ac- cording to Roman ideas grafted on German gods, which they worshipped in their groves. But the Germans them- selves gave them no Greco-Eoman but German names, as Grimm proves, — and who, moreover, corroborates our fundamental doctrines respecting mythology, namely, that the foundation of all Saga is myth : that is, the faith in the gods as it descends from people to people in an infinite declination. Saga and history at their boundaries run into each other, but the universal substratum of all Saga is myth. " While history is produced from the actions of men. Saga floats above them as a light, which glances at intervals, like an odour that emanates from an object. Saga is incessantly reborn ; history repeats itself never. The winged Saga now lifts itself aloft, now falls ; its enduring settlement is a favour which it does not confer on every nation. Where distant events would have perished in the darkness of time, Saga unites itself to them, and cherishes a portion of them. But when myth and history meet together and become merged, then the epos erects a platform and spins its thread" (Grimm, a. a. 0. Introduction).
The chiefs or leaders of the Celts were called Druids, and amongst the Gauls also Semothees. They were judges, priests, physicians, lawgivers, and soothsayers. Pomponius ascribes a higher science — yes, wisdom itself — to the Druids. " These," he says, " profess to understand the size and shape of the earth and the universe, the movements of the heavens and the stars, and all that the gods intend. They
THE DETJIDS. 87
teach the highest class of the people secretly in caves and in remote places. One of their chief doctrines, and which is also known to the common people, is the immortality of the soul."
In later times they appear to have been held in still greater estimation in Britain, and far more so than in Gaul itself. They divided, however, their general office, as nature had taught it them later, into several classes ; so that the proper Druids concerned themselves chiefly with the forma- tion of laws, others with inquiries into the knowledge of nature and medicine, and the bards occupied themselves with the art of poetry.
You recognise amongst the Druids the conditions of all primeval people, as they are found in the East amongst the Egyptians, the Israelites, etc. They had combined completely in themselves the whole conduct and rule of the people, as the priest-physicians, and even their customs accorded fully with those of the East; for the Druids communicated their fundamental doctrines and customs only to the initiated, whom they taught in sacred groves and remote places (Caesar, lib iii. c. 14). In the exercise of the sacred services, the Druids, like the Egyptians and the Pytha- goreans, were clad in a white robe (Pliny, xxx.) They ^ healed sickness and diseases by magical practices ; and while they professed to have intercourse with the gods, they proclaimed future events ; and their wives, the so- called Alruns, Alrauns, were highly celebrated for their vaticinations and enchantments, for their healing of wounded warriors, and assistance of women in travail. In what respect these prophetic women stood, is shown by the factthat even the Emperor Aurelian consulted them (Vopiscus Aurelian. c. 44). They were also acquainted with the means of producing ecstasy ; and as one of the most ex- cellent magical means — as one adapted to nearly all possible cases — they used the mistletoe of the oak, which I they gathered at certain times and with certain ceremonies. ' Whilst they dwelt under the oaks, and there performed their public worship, they believed that a plant which grew \ on their sacred branches must be an especial gift of heaven, \ — yes, that the mistletoe was the sign of the tree whicli the / gods themselves had selected. On this account, according '
68 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
to PHdj, they never performed their sacerdotal offices with- out such a branch of the mistletoe (Plin. lib. xvi. c. 44). *' Nihil habent Druidae (ita suos appellant magos) visco et arbore, in qua gignatur (si modo sit robur) sacratius. Jam per se roborum eligunt lucos, nee ulla sacra sine ea fronde conficiunt." Holy waters and groves present themselves continually amongst the G-ermans, as the Bodensee, or Wodansee, the Odenwald, or Odinswald ; and they perform their sacred sacrifices under sacred trees ; and there their inspired bards prophesied. To these trees a magical power was not unjustly attributed, as many kinds (laurel, elder, etc.) possess the peculiar virtue of producing sleep and promoting prophetic dreams ; and these woods had their strength increased by being magnetised by them.
They ascribed also a most pre-eminent activity to the moon. The conspicuous changes of the moon, and the evident increasing and decreasing moods of activity in plants and animals, and which was very striking to them in men, had taught them, as it had all other people of nature, many things. It may be asked whether the many cures by sympathy, yet common amongst the people of various classes in G-ermany, have not descended from the Druids ? For the rest, it is remarkable that in France the practice of medicine continued the longest in connection \v'ith the priesthood; and various hospitals were under the manage- ment of the priests, who were at the same time physicians. This is still the case in some instances.
I find a very remarkable relation in Pomponius (De situ orbis, lib. iii. c. 6) concerning the priestesses of the island of Sark in the British sea. "This island," he says, "was much celebrated on account of the oracle of the Gallic god. The conductors of it were nine Gallic priestesses, X who had made the vow of chastity. They were considered to be endowed with peculiar powers ; namely, that by their singing they could excite the wind and the sea, and change themselves into the forms of any beasts that they pleased ; that they healed sicknesses which no others could cure; and that they knew and foretold the future. But they were only well-disposed to sea-faring people, and to them only so far as they were disposed to consult them." Of the Druids in England and Gaul, Pliny says (xxx. 1), that they vati-
PEOPIIETIC WOMEIf OF A^'CIEXT GEBMAI^Y. 89
ciliated and cured diseases : — " Gralleos utique possedit et quidem ad nostram memoriam. Nam Tiberii Csesaris prin- cipatus sustulit Druidas eorum et hoc genus vatum medi- carumque. Britannia hodieque attonite earn celebrat tantis caeremoniis, ut dedisse Persis videri possit."
What is here said of the Druids, applies also, more or less, to the ancient Grermans. Truly many of the most striking circumstances connected with them are lost to us in oblivion, so that we are only made acquainted with a few of their phenomena which resemble magnetism, and are not informed of their particular practices and modes of pro- ceeding. From the G-erman gods, the Sun, the Moon, Wodan — Woutan — Donar, etc., the days of the week have received their names ; and Grrimm traces minutely the con- nection between the priesthood and the prophetic woman — Dis, Deis, Aurinia, Aliruna, etc. The priests were the guardians of the sacred grove, Grodi ; and, besides, the priesthood held at the same time the office of judges ; and in martial expeditions the maintenance of discipline even belonged to them, and not to the generals. The chariot of the god was only touched by the priests ; their approach was perceived by him. As to what concerns their secret ceremonies, these were probably so strictly guarded that they were witnessed by no stranger.
The prophetic women of the Grermans stood in the same relation to them as the Sibyls to the Eomans, whose counsels were followed as sacred, and their responses relied on as incapable of deceiving (Tacitus de morib. Grerm. c. viii., editio Ernesti). "Inesse quinetiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant ; nee aut concilia earum adspernantur, aut responsa negligunt." Tacitus speaks especially of one of them called Veleda. They were known also under the names of Alrunes, Alurines, Alioruns, which is not to be considered as a proper name, but as a general one, apper- taining to all the prophetic women. Alraun is a necro- mantic spirit ; raunen means still to speak secretly, — " runian susurrare."
Of this Yeleda of the Germans, Tacitus writes, that " she exercises a great authority ; for women have been held here from the most ancient times to be prophetic, and, by ex- cessive superstition, as divine. The fame of Veleda stood
90 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
on the very highest elevation, for she foretold to the Grermans a prosperous issue, but to the legions their destruction. (Tacit, hist. iv. 61.) 'Ea virgo — Veleda — late imperitabat: Vetera apud Grermanos more, quo plerasque foeminarum fatidicas, et, augescente superstitione, arbitrantur Deas. Yeledae auctoritas adolevit. Nam prosperas G-ermanis res et excidium legionum praedixerat' (65). As the people of Cologne concluded an alliance with the Tenctari, they an- nounced,— ' Arbitriutn habebimus Civilem et Yeledam, apud quos pactum sancientur. Sic lenitis Tencteris le- gati ad Civilem et Yeledam missi cum donis, cuncta ex voluntate Agrippinensium perpetravere. Sed coram adire, alloquique Yeledam negatum, arcebantur aspectu, quo venerationis plus inesset.' He relates further that the Eomans themselves sent ambassadors with presents to Yeleda. But she was not to be approached or spoken to; she was rarely visible, and thus her honour was increased. She herself lived upon a tower, from whence, like a message from the gods, her counsels and responses were brought down."
Grimm, in the twelfth chapter of the " German Mytho- logy," treats of the wise, prophetic women. '• The business and function of the demi-goddesses is in general that they serve the gods, and reveal their will to men. It is a striking feature of our heathenism, that women were selected for this office. The Jewish and Christian nations present a contrast to this, — prophets prophesy, angels and saints proclaim the commands of God. The Grecian gods avail themselves of male and female messengers. Amongst the Germans the sentences of fate in the mouth of women appear to acquire greater sanctity. Only as exceptions do prophetic men present themselves. Hence it may be, perhaps, that language allegorises crimes and virtues as women. The great function is that of bringing to mortal men the announcement of good or evil, conquest or death, not what the gods do amongst themselves. Their wisdom explores, nay, they turn and order events in fate, warn from dangers, counsel in doubt, and, therefore, they are styled knowing and wise women." The Dis, Alrunes, Nornor, Pays, Yalkyrior, of these it is said that they pass through air and water ; the gift of swimming and flying is peculiar
YELEDA ATs^D PEOPHETIC WOMETT OF THE CIMBRIAKS. Ol
to them ; they can assume the shape of a swan, and there- fore the Swan-maiden, Bertha, was called the Swan-footed queen.
Erom these few particulars we draw some remarkable facts. In the first place, Yeleda dwelt upon a tower, of the interior of which we, alas ! know nothing ; but it is im- portant that she allowed no one to approach her, nor herself to be disturbed in her magical contemplations. In the second place, she was in high estimation on account of her oracular announcements, since they brought her such rich presents. This the G-ermans, who once sent to her on the Lippe a three-ruddered admiral ship, did not alone do (Tacit, histor. v. 22), but even the Eomans as enemies ; for Tacitus says expressly that the Eomans sent to her pre- sents by ambassadors ; and Cerealis forwarded secret mes- sengers, and implored Yeleda and her associates to allow the Eomans, who had suffered so many defeats, to enjoy a change of martial fortune. Also in the time of Vespasian Veleda was still honoured like a goddess (Tacitus de moribus Germanorum, c. 8). After Veleda, a virgin, called Ganna, was honoured as a prophetess.
The Cimbrians when they took the field were accompanied by aged prophetic women, who were clad in white, had bare feet, and wore an iron girdle. The blood of the slain was brought in a sacrificial kettle, from which they divined. The kettle reminds us of the later witch-kettle, when a he-goat was offered to the old German god of thunder, Donar. Before this goat the people bowed themselves, — whence the later adoration of the goat by witches, as the devil in that shape. The Prussians, indeed, retained the religion of the goat till the fifteenth century, and offered to Peron, the god of thunder, the sacrifice of goats. The god of the Sclaves, Triglau, is represented with two goat's heads. The Germans offered horses, like the Persians, and Odin had two wolves and two ravens as constant attendants. They were later the hell-wolf and the hell-raven, as Donar' s goat became the hell-goat, in which we see, what is worthy of remark, the two-fold nature of the divination of the ancient Germans ; the one of pure magic, as in the case of Veleda, and the other wild and impure, that of Cimbrian blood- offering priestesses.
92 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
They believed, too, that they could divine by lot : but this was a very simple proceeding. They cut a branch from a fruit-bearing tree into many small pieces, and scattered them marked with certain signs on a white cloth. According as the inquiry was a public or a private one, the priest or the father of the family took up the diiferent pieces amid prayers and arranged them according to the different indications. They had, however, many other modes of divination, amongst which perhaps the most remarkable was, that by the rushing and the whirling of waters they fell into ecstasy and divined. By these modes the eyes, the ears, and the nerves were, in a mysterious manner, moved, agitated, and determined, so that one is reminded of the enchanted Nereids, Xymphs, and Mxes. These, were, perhaps, only a certain means of curing ailments of the nerves, and particularly to put people prone to sleep-waking into a better condition, a supposition which certain experiences actually corroborate.
The practice of magic spread itself later amongst the common people, who were, to some extent, also acquainted with Christianity. The heathen did not lay aside their ancient customs and opinions so easily as their clothes, and the religious zeal of the priests was not able to put down the prevailing practice of sorcery. " Heathenism and Chris- tianity, after they came in conflict, — that is, after the con- version of pagans, — exercised a mutual influence on each other : Christianity while it sought to eradicate the ideas of paganism, and paganism while it sought to conceal itself under Christian forms. The conquering faith went forth to annihilate the conquered one ; the conquered endeavoured, as it were, to secure its devastated possession in the midst of the enemy ; here were pagan maxims planted in their purity ; there they stole in, little shaken at heart, under Christian names. Certain Christian myths — those, at the same time, of the Old Testament — mingled themselves with the ecclesiastical legends of the middle ages, especially amongst the people. Thus elves and giants were converted into devils, and women of the night into witches. Woutan also degenerated into a terrible hunter ; Halda and Bertha into bugbears for children. The ravens of Woutan belong to the devil, but the actions of giants are conferred on the saints" (Grimm).
THE SALIC LAW AGAITTST WITCHCEArT. 93
At a later period political power stepped into the arena, and placed itself in direct hostility to all magic. The East and AYest Groths issued very severe laws, which are known by the name of the Salic. A woman suspected of magic was committed to the flames as a sorceress and witch. This first happened in the sixteenth century, in the reign of Childerich I., in which two women accused of witchcraft were burnt alive (Cantz, De cultibus magicis, i. c, 3). Thereupon quickly followed ordinances and commands of terror from councils and kings against witches and magicians, from which it appears that the women of that time were most addicted to magic arts.
A number of persons by no means inconsiderable, espe- cially women, suffering from attacks of cramp, who were directly believed to be possessed by or influenced by the devil, with whom they were said to have made a pact, were very early made deplorable sacrifices to the blind zeal of religion. We shall have occasion to become more nearly acquainted with the subject of witchcraft ; in the meantime it may be here remarked that the Salic laws speak of magic knots and bandages — ligatures, of which the G-reeks, and still more the Latin poets, sang ; and they mention also formulas of sorcery, and nocturnal assemblies, in which the accused are said to have celebrated their demoniac feasts. These severe prohibitions did not avail much ; they only stimulated to secret leagues, from which, finally, actual and terrible mischiefs arose, so that it became absolutely necessary to put an end to them. But unfortunately very little discri- mination was made between innocent sufferers from attacks of cramps, or convulsions, or affections of the mind, and between avowed witches and wizards. Accordingly, in the time of Charlemagne, in 914, a great number were burnt, and the practice continued for centuries.
In the eighth century the Spaniards were invaded by the Saracens, who brought with them Arabian learning to Europe, which cast a new light on this continent. There had prevailed amongst the Arabs for a long period the Pytha- gorean, Platonic, eclectic, and Aristotelian philosophers. There were professedly disciples rather of Aristotle than of Pythagoras and Plato ; yet there really prevailed much more of the spirit of the latter. The mystical philosophy of
94 HISTORY OF MAGIC,
Thopbail, of Ayicenna, Avempan, Avicebran, etc., received additions from the literature of wonders, and these were openly taught at Salamanca and Toledo (Tiedemann, c. i. p. 98). This public display of magic, it is true, was resisted by some, and a cave was discovered in which the magical exhibitions were made. It appears to have been clearly the case that the Arabs were zealously addicted to magic ; and they have defended it with great enthusiasm, and in an eclectic manner, in many of their writings. It would appear never to have been in evil repute amongst them, and there are no laws extant by which they ever sought to oppose it.
In the eleventh century the Arabic learning came into France, England, and Grermany, and many persons travelled to Spain in order to make themselves acquainted with it. To this thereading of the books of the church greatly contributed, over the doctrines of which the spirit of critical inquiry began to throw some doubts which required a philosophy to solve. For this purpose they brought the most eminent Arabian books home with them, and thus magic acquired a higher reputation and received a philosophical dress, which, how- ever, was now bedizened with all sorts of tawdry colours and finery There now arose philosophical writers who drew all eyes upon them. Philosophy lifted up its head, and was now openly taught by Eaymond Lully, Alexander vou Hales, and their disciples: AlbertusMagnus, Thomas Aquinas, and others. All these men were well acquainted with the Arabic writings, and magic now received a host of defenders, who often understood how, with the noblest views, to separate the truth from fable, lies, and deceit. It would be easy for us to produce from the writings of these authors much that is beautiful and instructive, for they contemplated the sub- ject with a true spirit of philosophical inquiry. Such are the writings of Albertus Magnus, Eoger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, and others, — productions of eminent value. Al- bertus confesses openly that he had made magical experi- ments (Albert. Magn. Op. t. iii. de an. p. 23, Lugdun. 1651) ; and in his natural philosophy and descriptions ot nature he frequently speaks of sympathy, antipathy, in- fluence of stars, and other magic things. Pomponaz (De naturalium effect, admirandorum causis seu de incant. liber,
AMULETS AND CHARMS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 95
auctore P. Pomponace, Basel, 1517). "All wonders," he says, " that people ascribe to the devil, are either deceit or they are natural. There are men who through the power of their will can produce most marvellous phenomena and cures. But in order to effect these perfectly you must have faith and love, and a fervent desire to help the sick ; and for this every one is not qualified. The sick, too, must have faith." He says that children are more susceptible of the magic influence than adults. In the meantime he counsels his reader to keep the matter secret.
At the same time came in practice the wearing of amulets and the^ names of saints, through which people believed themselves to be defended from the most grievous sickness, and made capable of healing them, by remedies which had been discovered in the books of the most ancient physicians and Arabs. On these people laid a Christian importance, which gave rise to the most confused and superstitious formulas, to which the most powerful philosophical thinkers were no longer able to set bounds. A couple of such healing formulas of the clearer and better sort are the following : —
" Caspar brings myrrh ; Melchior incense ; Balthasar gold. Whoever carries these three names about with him, will, through Christ, be free from the falling sickness" (Tiedemann, p. 102). Here is a second. The epileptic patient is taken by the hand, and the operator whispers softly in his ear : — " I abjure thee by the sun and the moon and the gospel of to-day, etc. that thou arisest and no more fallest to the ground ; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Grhost." Issues of blood are to be stopped in the same manner. We see here a magical mode of ope- ration ; for that holding of the hand, and the gently speaking in the ear, by which the brain is breathed upon, are very powerful modes of manipulation. To this is added the spiritual effect of addressing the expectant and excited mind with such powerful and holy words.
The magic of that time may be divided into three parts. The first is based on sorcery, and makes a pact with the devil. The second practises with the stellar influences, with sympathy and antipathy. It depends much on the effect of (lifterent words, and on other magical customs. A third
96 niSTOET OF MAGTC.
kind has been classed with magic, but is rather to be re- garded as a mystic magic, whose votaries have sought to annihilate sensuality by piety and purification of the heart in supernatural contemplations ; yea, have even sought to arrive at Grod by them. The first kind has nothing to do with the two latter. The third was, for the most part, united with the second, but they who belonged to the third generally despised the second.
What rank the magic of those times acquired may be conceived from the fact, that not merely secret doctors and the common people, but even kings and emperors, were ad- dicted to it. The Emperor Frederick 11. , in the thirteenth century, is said to have used magic arts ; and Rudolph 11. and Charles V. are said to have been much devoted to such studies. Maximilian I. and the G-rand Elector of Branden- burg, Joachim I., had even Johannes Trithemius as teacher of astrology, who was the most zealous defender of magic (Cantz, De cult. mag. i. 4 ; Tiedemann, p. 110 ; Mohsen's History of Science, in the Brandenburg Mark.) In France, Catherine de Medici was extremely addicted to magic.
Passavant, in his Inquiries into the Magnetism of Life and of Clairvoyance, has collected many facts respecting the magic of the northern nations, of which we will here avail our- selves briefly. At page 305 of the second edition it is said: —
" The G-erman and Sclave original races, like the primeval Saga of all peoples which are wrapped in the mists of time, speak of seers and seeresses, whose magical powers were at the command of the public. The prophecies in the Edda are similar to those of many eastern seers of the primeval ages. Odin himself travels to the ancient Yala, the prophetess of the farthermost north. Yala is the guardian spirit of the earth, the earliest of all prophetesses. The oldest portion of the Edda is called from her Yoluspa, — the vision of Yala, Aroused by Odin's magic song from the long death-sleep, she prophesies, on the grave of the Huns, the destruction of the world. Before the end of time and the twilight of the gods, will Loke, the wicked one, be set free from his bonds, will go forth with the giants of fire to the conflict with the gods, and all the children of ancient Night will arise to destroy the kingdom of light.
MAGIC OF SCAXDTXAYIA. 97
But when the reign of the gods is over, then will AUfather in a new morning create gods and men anew out of the fidness of his glory."
After Passavant has noticed the second-sight of the Scotch, according to Boethius's History of Scotland, and •the prophetic vision in Macbeth, which Shakspere has em- ployed as a real fact of history, which became literally ful- filled, he continues : — " Amongst the Finns and Laplanders magic practices have mingled themselves strangely with a variety of heathenish superstitions ; and long after their conversion to Christianity, contrary to the strictest prohi- bitions, magical dealings have been continued almost to the present time. The small number of clergymen, the con- fined extent of their influence in a wide and thinly-peopled country ; the wild, desolate scenery, the frosty sky, the soli- tude, the hunter- life, the deep roots of ancient usage, all these things contribute to perpetuate those tenacious remains of heathenism. Sturleson, Saxo, J. Zeigler, Olaus Magnus, P. Claudi, Tornaus, Joh. Schefter, professor in Upsala, all relate many things of this sorcery, accepting with easy credence much that is false ; superstitiously misunderstand- ing other things ; and, for the rest, giving us many well- attested and remarkable facts.
The knowledge of magic was formerly in the far north the subject of regular instruction, and the highest nobility sent their sons and daughters to the most celebrated pro- fessors of the art. Their wisdom is recorded in the Euues, the primeval northern Sanscrit. A more confined tradition springs up after the extinction of primal and more magnificent traditions handed down from father to children, and thence may have arisen the legends of house and family-spirits, like the Lares and Penates of Latium, which are inherited from age to age.
Some sought with zeal and arduous endeavour to acquire the prophetic faculty ; others found it unsought and in their infancy. It is worthy of note, what Tornaus says, Avho regards the seer-faculty, which formerly was so much in esteem, as the work of the devil : — " Some possess the magic gift from nature, which is horrible. For those whom the devil per- ceives will be obedient servants and work-tools, he seizes on in childhood with sickness, jiresenting to them in a state of
YOL. II. H
98 HTSTOET or MAGIC.
unconsciousness many imaginations and visions, from which, according to the capacity of their age, they learn what belongs to black art. Those who a second time are attacked with this ailment see yet more numerous visions, from which they learn yet more. If they fall a third time into this condition, they are so violently aifected by it, that they are in danger of death, but at the same time all the visions of the devil and his wonders are revealed to them, so that they attain to the perfect knowledge of the art of sorcery. And these are instructed in it to that degree, that they can see far distant things with the ordinary instruments of en- chantment ; nay, must probably see them, whether they will or no, so wholly are they possessed by the devil."
Immediately afterwards he relates that a Laplander whom he had often and severely reproved for his magic kettle- drum, gave it up freely of himself, confessing sorrowfully, that without the aid of that he saw everything that passed in distant places ; adding, that he did not know what was come to his eyes ; and hereupon he related everything which had happened to him (Tornaus) on his journey to Lapland.
Their most valuable instrument of enchantment is this sorcerers' kettle-drum, which they call Kaunas or Quobdas. They cut it in one entire piece out of a thick tree stem, the fibresof which run upwards in the same direction as the course of the sun. The drum is covered with the skin of an animal ; and in the bottom holes are cut by which it may be held. Upon the skin are many figures painted ; often Christ and the Apostles, with the heathen gods, Thor, Noorjunkar, and others jumbled together; the picture of the sun, shapes of animals, lands and waters, cities and roads, in short, all kinds of di^awings according to their various uses. Upon the drum there is placed an indicator, which they call Arpa, which consists of a bundle of metallic rings. The drumstick is, generally, a reindeer's horn. This drum they preserve with the most vigilant care, and guard it especially from the touch of a woman. When they will make known what is taking place at a distance, — as to how the chase shall succeed, how business will answer, what result a sickness will have, what is necessary for the cure of it, and the like, they kneel down, and the sorcerer beats the drum ; at first with light strokes, but as he proceeds, with ever louder and
THE MAGIC or THE LAPLAXDEES. 99
stronger ones, round the index, either till this has moved in a direction or to a figure which he regards as the answer which he has sought, or till he himself falls into ecstasy, when he generally lays the kettle-drum on his head. Then he sings with a loud voice a song which they call Jogke; and the men and women who stand round sing songs, which they call Daura, in which the name of the place whence they desire information frequently occurs. The sorcerer lies in the ecstatic state for some time, — fre- quently for many hours apparently dead, with rigid features ; sometimes with perspiration bursting out upon him. In the meantime the bystanders continue their incantations, which have for their object that the sleeper shall not lose any part of his vision from memory ; at the same time they guard him carefully that nothing living may touch him — not even a fly. AYheu he again awakes to consciousness, he relates his vision, answers tlie questions put to him, and gives unmistakeable evidence of having seen distant and unknown things. The inquiry of the oracle does not always take place so solemnly and completely. In every- ! day matters, as regards the chase, etc., the Lapp consults j his drum without falling into the somnambulic crisis. On | the other hand, a more highly developed state of the pro- ] phetic vision may take place without this instrument, as I has been already stated. Claudi relates, that at Bergen j in IS'orway the clerk of a German merchant demanded of $ a Norwegian Finn-Laplander what his master was doing i in Germany. The Finn promised to give him the intelli- | gence. He began then to cry out like a drunken man, and | to run round in a circle, till he fell, as one dead, to the | earth. After a while he awoke again, and gave the answer, ] which time showed to have been perfectly correct. Finally, that many, while wholly awake, free from convulsions and a state of unconsciousness, are able to become clairvoyant, is placed beyond all doubt by the account of Tornaus.
The use which they make of their power of clairvoyance, and their magic arts, is, for the most part, good and inno- cent : that of curing sick men and animals ; inquiring into far oif and future things, which in the confined sphere of their existence is important to them. There are instances,^ however, in which the magic art is turned to the injury of
100 niSTORT OF MAGIC.
others ; and the ahove-mentioned writers relate many in- stances of this kind, but which appear too fabulous to be noted here. Others reject these atrocities, and will not permit their divination to be affected with this misuse ; an act of justice which is not reciprocated by the reporters of these facts, who ascribe all the wonders of magic, with- out exception, to the devil, as they do all modern instances to imagination.
This mode of consulting the oracle still prevails on the
north-east coast of Eussia amongst its pagan inhabitants,
except that it is there a particular class of priests, called
V Schamans, who exercise the office of seers. These Schamans,
who are consulted by the people concerning thefts, sick-
^ nesses, and the meaning of dreams, put on a particular
I official dress, beat the magic drum, invoke their demons, fall
) into the state of phrenzy, convulsion, and fainting, and then
1 deliver the oracular message. The Schamans attain a
I high rank and influence throughout North-eastern Siberia ;
I but they nowhere acquire such a power as amongst the
; Tschuktschen, where they enjoy a wholly unconditional
: and blind confidence, and employ this sometimes in a
I thoroughly fearful manner. There are found amongst them
I ciitierent forms of magic and trance, as in past time was
\ common throughout heathendom ; but that original power
I of prophetic vision is possessed by them only in its deepest
I form, resembling a madness, a wild inspiration, when called
I forth by intoxicating and stupifying means, and in con-
1 nection with a bloody superstition, under the influence of
I which the excited Schamans demanded, not long ago, human
sacrifices for the reconcilement of the gods.
These incantations may throw some light on those dark phenomena of witches and sorcery in the middle ages, which are to be regarded as the remains of heathen worship and heathen magic, and which have retained their hold longest in the northern nations, and of which the second-sight and the so-called Taigheirm are also fragments. "We may give an idea of this from Horst's Deuteroscopy.
According to Grimm, the Edda contains a mysterious and profound myth of the three goddesses of fiite. They are called jN'ornor collectively, but their individual names are X7rdhr, Yerdhaudi, and Sculd; or, the Past, the Present,
THE NOENOE, ETC. 101
and the Future.. These three maidens determine the length of every man's life. AccordiDg to the Edda, there are good and bad fates ; and besides those chief three there are many others. Some Nornor descend from the gods, others from the elves, and others from the dwarfs. "As the Nornor are related to Orlog, so is parea to fatum,'' says Grimm ; " whence the Italian fata, the French fee, the German fei?i.'^ These Fees were originally named from their announcement of fates, but w^ere soon afterwards regarded as a kind of spirit-women. There are many legends of the fairies of romance which accord wholly with the popular belief of the Germans ; whence the stories of the wise women.
The desire to learn the future, and to enter into commu- nication with supernatural powers, is so deeply implanted in the human race, that Cicero might truly say : — " Gentem quidam nulla video, neque tarn humanam atque doctam, neque tam immanem, tamque barbaram, quse non significari futura et a quibusdam intelligi prsedicique posse censeat." But the passion is equally inherent in human nature, to burst all impediments to freedom, and to soar above the constraints of the present state ; and even at all hazard, when it is not to be accomplished by mild means, to take the devils by assault. This passion, when it is once awakened, in rude nations and the ignorant people, is all the more reck- less and impetuous, because neither the light of religion illumes it, nor has her gentle warmth modified its tone. The idea of securing a long life, wealth and honour, inflames the imagination, and rushes like a lawless element in wild Mantic excitement over sacrifices of men and animals, and through hell itself, towards heaven. It is known how heathendom, especially in certain transition periods, and during the decline of the hereditary natural spirit, brooding over chimeras in a rabid Manticism, as it were inverts nature itself, abuses the innocent animal w^orld with horrible activity, and treads everything human under foot. He who who would see more particular proofs of this may consult many ancient authors on matters of witchcraft, and espe- cially in Fencer's great work, " De Divinatione," and iu Albertus Magnus.
Such practices of sorcery have been inherited from the northern heathen by the Icelanders, the Laplanders, and
102 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
the higlilanders of Scotland, who endeavour to ohtain from hell imaginarv good by force ; to possess themselves, by their own power and arbitrary "^ill, of the gift of second-sight ; and to this end they nsed means not only absurd and ridiculous, but frequently the most terrific species of infernal magic. Eor w^here men know not Grod, or have turned away from him into wickedness, they address them- selves devoutly to the kingdom of demons, and call forth the powers of darkness, to enable them to enjoy the plea- sures of unrestrained imagination, and of reckless enthu- siasm, careless of the great future, and of the final destiny of the soul. Such was the state of things from the com- mencement of Christianity to the end of the middle ages — from the Scottish Taigheirm to the Witch-hammer, — the former of which we shall notice first.
The Taigheirm was an infernal magical sacrifice of cats, the origin of which lies in the remotest pagan times, and in rites dedicated to the subterranean gods, from whom men solicited, by nocturnal ofteriugs, particular gilts and benefits. Through Christianity these sacrifices were modified ; and instead of being made to the subterranean powers, they were now made to the infernal ones ; or, as they were called in the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, the Black- Cat Spirits. AVhence these sacrifices came to the "Western Isles is not known, but most probably it was from the farthest north, as the Western Isles were peopled from Iceland, Norway, and the Faroe Isles, and were dependent on and connected with those countries till the later Christian ages. In those remote northern lands, as in Greenland, according to the Danish and Swedish learned men and missionaries, as well as according to the Icelanders, there still prevails a faith in sorcerers, exorcists, and communers with spirits ; wherein we easily perceive the alliance to the old heathen world, and to a system of demons and magic constituted wholly in their spirit. Horst, in his " Deuteroscopy," treats of the national manners, customs, and opinions of the Highlanders and AVestern Islanders, with some remarks on their history and climate, from which it appears that those countries in the ancient times, before the earth was enriched by culture, and nature made fruitful and agreeable, as it were, in her own despite,
OLD TTirLE AND THE IfOETHEEN ISLES. 103
were well adapted by their melancholy aspect, covered as they were by eternal fogs, exposed to savage and incessant storms, to oppress the minds of men, and by the absence of external amenities so to operate on the imagination, that the inner visions and conceptions retained a peculiarly gloomy and yet grotesque colouring. For, according to Howell, " there is to be seen in many places neither a bird in the air nor a beast on the earth, nor even a worm crawling on the ground ; scarcely a green blade of grass, but merely a black, moss-covered surface ; a raw, sharp, melancholy, and catarrh-producing atmosphere, and chains of rugged and wild mountains and precipices." Thus, those countries have been, as it were, the natural home of the second-sight from the most ancient times. Caesar and Plutarch speak of these islands as desolate, melancholy solitudes, where virions and ghostly apparitions are things familiar to the unfor- tunate inhabitants, who passed their sombre days in con- stant terror and apprehension. Plutarch mentions in particular the British, or rather the islands lying beyond Britain. There lay that unknown region of fable and myth, that mysterious Thule, sung of by Goethe, which the ancients regarded as the extremest boundary of the earth towards the north. These lands were always regarded as notorious for their spectral visions. Eusebius, too (De Preparat. Evangel, lib. v. c. 9), says, that " beyond Britannia lie many islands, of which several are filled with demons and evil spirits, who occasioned thunder, storms, torrents of rain, etc., and puzzled both the inhabitants and visitors with such delusive scenes as to bring them into confusion and anguish, and to injure them both soul and body"
Many centuries afterwards, the Venerable Bede, in his History of the English Church, corroborated these and similar statements. He relates, for instance, that down to the eighth century the island of Lewis, one of the largest "Western Isles, continued almost wholly destitute of men, fruits, trees, and herbs, and that it was the favourite ren- dezvous and place of assembly of evil spirits and malicious apparitions, who there practised their devilish ceremonies. It was not till the pious Cudbrecht landed upon the island, in order to drive thence the devil and his agents, and to cultivate the land, that the demons, after a severe conflict,
104 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
began gradually to withdraw. But thougli tliese islands were their favourite resort, yet they at the same time scat- tered themselves throughout the other islands m that quarter, and even took fair possession of the mainland. "Thus we see here," says Horst, "the whole of the British islands, yes, and also the Highlands of Scotland, overrun with demons, who were like the legions of base spirits whom Soloman inclosed in a kettle, and sunk at Babylon, but which, on the kettle being opened in quest of treasure, streamed up into the air, spread themselves over the whole heavens, and thence over all Asia."
According to the old theories of spirits, departed souls and condemned spirits were sent to those islands, where they continued to the seventeenth century. These were vex- ing and complaining ghosts, which appeared to men, some- times in the human form, and sometimes in that of beasts, and in every horrid mask that can be imagined. The Faroe Isles, also, were haunted by such malevolent spirits, which are said to have carried oft' men. In later times they became gradually less dangerous ; and the spirit-races of all kinds and colours, — fairies, trolls in Scandinavia, wraiths in. England and Scotland, became, on the introduction of Christianity, by degrees more social, even on those remote and desolate islands, where, according to Isaiah (xiii. 21), " doleful creatures and owls dwell, and satyrs dance." This modification is agreeable to the doctrine of second- sight, which still is said to prevail there.
According to Horst's Deuteroscopy, black cats were
indispensable to the incantation ceremony of the Taigheirm,
and these were dedicated to the subterranean gods, or, later,
to the demons of Christianity. The midnight hour, between
Friday and Saturday, was the authentic time for these
horrible practices and invocations ; and the sacrifice was
continued four whole days and nights, without the operator
i taking any nourishment. " After the cats were dedicated
j to all the devils, and"put into a magico-sympathetic condition
j by the shameful things done to them, and the agony occa-
I sioned them, one of them was at once put upon the spit,
I and, amid terrific bowlings, roasted before a slow fire. The
j moment that the howls of one tortured cat ceased in death,
nother was put upon the spit, for a miDute of interval
THE TAIGHEIE:Nr. 105
must not take place if they would control liell ; and this continued for the four entire days and nights. If the exorcist could hold it out still longer, and even till his physical powers were absolutely exhausted, he must do so.'*
After a certain continuance of the sacrifice, infernal spirits appeared in the shape of black cats. There camo continually more and more of these cats ; and their bowlings^ mingled with those of the cats roasting on the spit, were! terrific. Finally appeared a cat of a monstrous size, with dreadful menaces. When the Taigheirm was complete, th^ sacrificer demanded of the spirits the reward of his ofteriug, which consisted of various things ; as riches, children, food, and clothing. The gift of second-sight, which they had not had before, was, however, the usual recompense ; and they retained it to the day of their death. The connection of these ceremonies with those of the Schamans of Northern Asia, and of the witch practices of the middle ages, is obvious.
One of the last Taigheirm, according to Horst, was held \ in the middle of the seventeenth century on the island of J Mull. The inhabitants still show the place where Allan (■ Maclean, at that time the incantation and sacrificial priest, | stood with his assistant, Lachlain Maclean, both men of a | determined and unbending character, of a powerful build of body, and both unmarried. Traces and monuments of heathen sacrifice, especially in England and Scotland, are discoverable within the Christian period. Thus, there were found, on the rebuilding of St. Paul's in London, the remains of many animals which had been offered to Diana in external sacrifices. Nay, there remained relics of such worship down to the period of the reigns of Edward YI. and Mary. Apollo also was worshipped during the earlier period of Christianity, at Thorney, near Westnnnster. That Diana was worshipped in Britain we know too from records of offerings to her of a most cruel nature, made during the. persecutions of the people of London by Diocletian. (See Deuce's Illustrations of Shakspeare.)
The offering of cats is remarkable, for it was also prac- tised by the ancient Egyptians. Not only in Scotland, bufe throughout all Europe, cats were sacrificed to the subter^
106 HISTORY OF MAGIC.
ranean gods, as a peculiarly effective means of coming into communication with the powers of darkness.
Allan Maclean continued his sacrifice to the fourth day, when he was exhausted both in body and mind, and sunk in a swoon ; but from this day he received the second-sight to the time of his death, like his assistant. In the people, the belief was unshaken that the second-sight was the natural consequence of celebrating the Taigheirm.
" The infernal spirits appeared, some in the early progress of the sacrifices, in the shape of black cats. The first who appeared during the sacrifice, after they had -cast a furious glance at the sacrificer, said — Lachlain Oer, that is, "Injurer of Cats." Allan, the chief operator, warned Lachlain, whatever he might see or hear, not to waver, but to keep the spit incessantly turning. At length the cat of monstrous size appeared ; and after it had set up a horrible howl, said to Lachlain Oer, that if he did not cease before their largest brother came he would never see the face of Grod. Lachlain answered that he would not cease till he had finished his work if all the devils in hell came. At the end of the fourth day, there sat on the end of the beam in the roof of the barn a black cat with fire-flaming eyes, and there was heard a terrific howl quite across the straits of Mull into Morven." Allan was wholly exhausted on the fourth day, from the horrible apparitions, and could only utter the word " Prosperity." But Lachlain, though the younger, was stronger of spirit, and perfectly self-possessed. He demanded posterity and wealth. And each of them received that which he had asked for. When Allan lay on his death-bed, and his Christian friends pressed around him, and bade him beware of the stratagems of the devil, he replied with great courage, that if Lachlain Oer, who was already dead, and he, had been able a little lonLCr to have carried their weapons, they would have driven Satan himself from his throne, and, at all events, would have caught the best birds in his kingdom.
When the funeral of Allan reached the churchyard, the persons endowed with the second-sight saw at some distance Lachlain Oer, standing fully armed at the head of a host of "black cats, and every one could perceive the smell of brim-
SCOTTISH AT^D SCAKDTNAYIAN ELTES. 107
stone which streamed from those cats. Allan's effigy, in complete armour, is carved on his tomb, and his name is yet linked with the memory of the Taigheirm.
Shortly before that time also Cameron of Lochiel per- formed a Taigheirm, and received from the infernal spirits a small silver shoe, which was to be put on the left foot of each new-born son of his family, and from w^iich he would receive courage and fortitude in the presence of his enemies ; a custom which continued till 1746, when his house was consumed with fire. This shoe fitted all the boys of his family but one, who fled before the enemy at Sheriff Muir, he having inherited a larger foot from his mother, who was of another clan. This story is more fully related in the Abendzeitung of April 1824.
The word Taigheirm means an armoury, as well as the cry of cats, according as it is pronounced. It is also very probable that the Taigheirm is closely connected wth the ceremony of incantation of the old Norse and Teutonic, Troll and Elfin faith ; while, as already observed, the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland were peopled from the north, where the invocations of the heathen demons, the belief in the pagan gods and sorcery, and the seeing of spirits, continued down to very recent times. Thus the Taigheirm was probably a sacrifice to the subterranean gods in heathenism, and under Christianity was changed into an invocation of infernal spirits. The belief in Trolls, who appeared allied to the imaginative creatures of the Taigheirm, and continue still to affect the minds of the common people, prevailed in Scandinavia before the Chris- tian era. The fairy-faith of Scotland coincides, in many particulars, with that of the Scandinavian elves. The elves of the Scottish Highlands, according to Cromek, wore always small, ornamental silver shoes. They have a fair complexion, and long, yellow hair hanging down over their shoulders ; a clear mark of their northern origin. They wear a green mantle embroidered with flowers, and breeches fastened with silken tassels. They have quivers of adder- skins ; bows made from the rib of a man who has been buried where the lands of three proprietors meet. Their arrows are of the reed, pointed with flints, and dipped in the juice of hemlock. "VVith these they shoot the
108 HisTOKT OF :magic.
cattle of those who have spoken ill of them, the wounds being invisible to ordinary eyes, and which people of higher endowments only can perceive and heal. In their inter- course with men they are generally well disposed.
The Trolls of Scandinavia also make presents, to cer- tain individuals, of silver shoes, such as they wear at their dances, to the possession of which some particular benefit is attached. In these coincidences the Scottish and Scandi- navian Elves and Trolls remind us of the witch-histories of the middle ages, though with these prevailed a far wilder romance, more resembling the Taigheirm. There are want- ing the fine silver shoes ; and in the wholly detestable Witch- hammer, says Horst, from which Germany, both Protestant and Catholic, as well as all Europe, with the exception of England, was instructed in the mysteries of witcli practices, there is not a single feature of the romance which these silver shoes recall to our recollection. There stand nakedly all the infernal gifts from a coarse mint, so many copper pieces or local florins, and if Satan has been very well pleased, and has given splendid honoraria, gold florins and ancient dollars, which within a short time turn into so much dirt, or, as St. Francis esthetically expressed himself in his time, into horse litter.
The northern mythology is the work of Scalds, — that is, of old northern poets. The religion of the heathen every- where originated in poetry ; so was it here, and here truly, cosmogony was the foundation of religion, the grotesque fea- tures of which, and the wild fantasy of the poetic construc- tors, showing whence it sprung. The physical allegories, also, here testify the genuine, original observation which pre- ceded mythology. Ton see in the northern poetry of nature the arising of the world out of the chaotic region of mist — Niflhem, out of the deaduess of winter — the giant Tmer, and advancing into the life of spring. There, too, as amongst the G-reeks, are the powers of nature symbolized in gigantic shapes : the giants of dark- ness— Xarsi, whose daughter, Night, black and gloomy, has a son, Andur, by the aether, Nagelfari — then the Earth, and with Dellingar — Twilight —the Day. Sun and Moon — Sool, later Odin, Maan — wind and water, are symbolized as giants, who encamp round the abyss of
THE WHITE AKD BLACK ELATES. 109
Time, and are lords of the heaven, the earth, and the under- world.
O. L. Woff, in his Mythology of Fairies and Elves, treats at large of the classes, kinds, and countries of the northern elves from historical and Ijterary sources. The gods of the north, by Geneday, the writiags of Procopius, Jornandes, Stagneli'us, Eahbek, Afzelius, Thiele, Nyerup, the Edda, etc. contain the rich materials of ancient Sagas, and the ideas of the people concerning the elves in the northern countries, where still, according to Arndt's assurance, in his " Travels through Sweden," the Alfar — Alfen — elves, live in the memory of the people of Sweden and Norway. In the Eddas the distinction between the white and the black elves is clearly marked, as may be seen in Nierup's Dictionary of the Scandinavian Mythology, and in Sander's Danish Handbook.
" Our heathen ancestors," says Thorlacius, in the Scandi- navian Museum for 1803, " believed that the whole world was filled with spirits of different kinds. They ascribed to them in general the same qualities as the Greeks did to their demons and demi-gods. These beings were divided according to their places of abode — heavenly and earthly. The first were well disposed to men, and therefore were called white elves, or light elves ; the latter, which were named after their haunts in thick woods, in caves, on moun- tains and rocks, in the air, or in the sea, etc., were regarded as a species of demons — black elves."
Against the humours of these spirits, which have much resemblance to the devils of the Middle-ages, the country people of the present day seek protection from the so-called Klokas, a sort of exorcists. It is also believed that the elves have kings and queens. The elf-dance is become a proverb. It is said in OJaus Magnus, that the people call the sport of the nocturnal spirits, elf, or elfin-dance, when such spirits dance, leap, and wildly sport, till their footsteps tread down into the earth so deeply and with such heat, that the sward is totally destroyed, and the grass will never more grow there."
The modern poets of Scandinavia have, on the contrary, very intellectually idealised this Elfin-people, or Huldra-
no HTSTOET OF MAGIC.
people, as tliey are called in Norway. Thus sings Stagnelius : —
*'Say, know'st the Elfin-people gay? They dwell on the river's strand ; They s^Din from the moonbeams their festive garb, With their small and lily hand," etc.
Wolf divides tlie fairy-land of the poets into three kinds. 1st. — Avalon, in the ocean, where is the island of the blest. 2nd. Those countries which, like the palace of Pari-Banon in the Eastern and European poetry, are found under the earth. 3. Those which lie in like abodes of the genii, and the possessions of Oberon, in wildernesses, in thick woods, in valleys and the gorges of mountains, and at the bottom of deep and remote meadows, etc.
The Scandinavian elves, or Maids of Diana, whom Saxo, and yet more amply Olaus Magnus, has described, are very celebrated. They are of beautiful and majestic presence, have flowing hair, and show themselves most in thick woods. Their dwellings are splendid, but are adorned by magic, and, according to the wish of the inhabitants, are now visible and now invisible. They appear chiefly in threes in company ; they know the future, and are frequently con- sulted by the people concerning life and death, and other circumstances. Saxo and Olaus Magnus relate examples of their having done essential services to Swedish kiugs and queens. Sometimes they present gifts to those who consult them, such as gold-lace, magic weapons, etc. ; in that they perfectly remind you of the heathen goddesses sitting on their golden thrones at their residences, or of the Alrunen or the Parses of antiquity. The ideas concerning these fabulous fairies could in the course of time only slowly adapt themselves to the progress of knowledge ; the old could not all at once be abandoned, nor the new become suddenly the objects of honour. Thence, therefore, so many traces of a multitude of recollections, one following fast upon another, and constituting the Scandinavian nations the mother of many heathenish traditions.
The dwarfs and Trolls play a great part in the northern popular belief, and, according to Arndt, still maintain their
GN'OMES, PIGMIES, KOBOLDS, NECKS, ETC. ]11
liold on the minds of the common people. Not only the iScaudinavian popular legends and ballads, but the Scotch also describe them as a kind of elementary spirits, and speak of their deeds ; and Paracelsus calls them People of the Mines, Gnomens, and Pigmies, a waggish, but contented and not malicious sort of creatures, as Matthisson truly pourtrays them : —
" From the deep mine rush wildly out The troop of Gruomes in hellish rout : Forth to tlie Witches-club thej fly j The GrifEns watch as they go by. The horn of Satan grimly sounds ; On Blocksburg's flanks strange dm resounds, And spectres crowd its summit liigh."
Sir Walter Scott believes that there is something historical at the bottom of the belief in these beings, and that they refer to the Pinns, who were subjected by the Scandinavians on the arrival of Odin. Perhaps they were Laplanders, who were altogether of small stature, and were driven by those strangers towards the high north. The warrior-companions of Odin saw a people who understood how to work the mines better than they ; Avhom they, therefore, connected in their imagination with subterranean spirits, who re- mained in the rocks and mines, and possessed incalculable riches. In these respects these Scandinavian pigmies accord entirely with the Idaic Dactyls, and they were probably of Oriental origin ; which may explain why so many were affected by this belief in little men of the mines, pigmies, etc.
A third kind of spirits are the Nissen or Kobolds, whom AVolf classes with the Troll family, which may be the case in Scandinavia; but in Grermany the Kobolds or Hobgoblin, the flaunting, terrifying, and noisy ghosts, form a particular class, and are of a particular kind, betraying an affinity to the infernal spectres. On the contrary, the Nisses or Necks of Scandinavia are of a thoroughly good disposition, as their names indicate, — that is, in Denmark, Nisse, good son, good youth ; and in Sweden, Tomtegubbe, the old man of the house. In ancient days they sometimes served the office of treasurer or master church-builder^ whence they
112 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
obtained the nnrae of Kirkegrimm. The Scandinavian Necks are not to be confounded with the Scottish familiar spirit, the Brownie, which had the gift of prophesying, and to which, according to Sir "Walter Scott, the production of a par- ticular clan in the Highlands or Western Isles was ascribed. Each family also had its own house-spirit. In fact, the Scottish Highlands and Islands are, as it were, the classic ground of the supernatural ; where from the primeval times a national and local spirit-world has prevailed ; and where men seemed to stand in especial rapport with the super- natural world. Ossian describes his dogs as howling because they saw the spirits of the slain warriors pass by. Here opened lip a world of magic and miracle, which has no parallel. Kational and family spirits took up their abode under well- known names on all hands, in mountains and solitudes, and exerted a decided influence on the inhabitants of the land. Besides those household spirits which Sir Walter Scott de- scribes as belonging to each clan, there were others more magical, who came and disappeared, like the witches of Shaks- peare, as bubbles of the earth. Other enigmatical beings awaken prophetic dreams, and lift the curtains of the future ; play and sing in the expanse of heaven, so that their songs may be learned by rote. In fact, Scotland was, till the period of the Middle Ages, the land of the beings of fancy of all colours and countries — Scandinavian, Norse, Anglo-saxon, and Teutonic ghosts and spectres, mingled themselves with the Caledonia! national spirits ; fairies or fays, elves, kobolds, dwarfs, wraiths, reigned nowhere in such a motley crowd as in Scotland and in the Scottish Isles ; and amongst no other people did they take such hold on actual life as in this classic spirit-ground, where, as we have seen, all circum- stances were of a prominent character. Horst remarks, that amongst no people have pneumatologic representations had such a practical influence on active life as in Scotland. Thus the fairy and the elfin faith, of which the German Hexen-hammer knew nothing, and which, in all the witch- prosecutions throughout Europe, in Spain, Italy, and France, never, or very rarely indeed, were noticed, in Scotland were often linked with the witch-superstition, and, as part and parcel of it, were pursued with fire and sword, and made the subject of criminal inquiries, like sorcery. In the Scottish
ELTISH FAIRIES OF SCOTLAI^^D. 113
•witcla-trials, the green and waggish fairies and elves often played, more or less, a part, which, according to the German Hexen-hammer, the black and repulsive paramours and demon-associates of the witches played in the rest of Europe."
In a pamphlet published by Dr. Fowler in 1696, it is stated that a certain Anna Jefferies took no nourishment for six months, which she did not receive from a small kind of spirits, called Fairies or Elves. Her intercourse with such elves was by no means uncommon. Anna JetFeries once sate, as she was nineteen years of age, in an arbour in the garden and knit, when six little elves clad in green came over the hedge to her, at which she was so terrified that she fell into convulsions, and was obliged to be carried to bed ; whither the elves followed her, and after some time disappeared through a window. They generally appeared as green-clad young huntsmen, or as light musicians, and occasionally they came in warlike array. In the Orkney Isles, according to Brand, elves were frequently seen clad from top to toe in armour ; they carried off men by secret powers, and acci- dents were attributed to them. One John Sinclair, in the preceding century, who was extremely sceptical in his ideas, though a clergyman, was one night going home when he was seized by an elf, and borne through the air many miles, " over ethereal fields and fleecy clouds," and finally set down at his own door ; whereupon he astonished his congre- gation by a full account of his adventure from the pulpit.
We see from this the perfect agreement with the history of the witch trials ; only here the convulsive paroxysms are by no means so violent, and the elfin spirits are of a softer and better nature, and less adventurous than those devils of the Middle Ages who actuated the possessed. For the rest, both races agree in their operations, and the Scotch witches of the sixteenth century wholly resemble, in the accounts given on the trials, the Grerman ones of the seventeenth century. The very powers of the spirits, as elves, travelling childreia, etc., appear also amongst the Germans. A Scotch witch, Allison Pearson, was burnt in 1586, because she had had intercourse with the elves, or Good !N^eighbours, and with the elfin queen herself.
" When she was ill, a green man appeared to her, as she
VOL. II. 1
114 HTSTOET or MAGIC.
herself stated before the tribunal, and promised her good if she were true to him ; but she was frightened, and cried out aloud. As no one came, however, she said to him that it might be so. Another time he came as a jolly brother in the company of many men and women, who were all very merry together, with music and good eating and drinking. She had herself once accompanied the elves, and, as she had afterwards divulged something of what she saw, she received a smart blow from one of them, which had left a mole on her left side. A cousin of hers had been carried away by the elves into the mountains, who related all that had passed, and how the elves, or Grood Neighbours, had melted their salve in a pan. Her elf was a young man, and would appear to her before the trial was over. He had commanded her to pray that she might not be carried away by the elves."
Of the German elves Grimm says — " Our manifola legends of dwarfs, elves, giants, etc., exceed those of the classical nations. They are more domestic, familiar, and naive. "What has antiquity to compare with our charming myth of the Silent People ? The legends for children — Kindermarchen — were unknown to them, while to us they make recompense for the want of other more intellectual fictions ; and therefore we are disposed somewhat to over- value them. Wichte and Elves constitute a pecidiar, independent, and isolated company. They have a super- human power to injure or assist. They appeared as dwarfs or deformed, but had the power of making themselves invi- sible. Both the names betoken demons, something like genii. Waifh is a female spirit, "With — spirit, demon. Elbe, Alp, Elfenfolk, resemble the devils of the Christian system, as pale, grey, hideous shapes."
The northern people had, as well as the southern, their water, field, and wood-spirits, their Nixes and Mermaids, with which they populated the country and nature on all sides. This kind of spirits also possess the gift of mantic and the act of prescience. Examples of these are to be, found in Wolfs " Mythologies of the Faires and Elves ;" Sir Walter Scott, on the Highlands ; Horst, in his " Memo- rabilien," 2d Part, and the " Zauberbibliothek," etc.; and concerning the Faroe Isles, especially Debes, '' Faeroa rese- rata," London, 1796; Hippert, "Andeutungen zur Philo-
LITTLE MEK OF THE MINES ; WILD WOMEN, ETC. 115
Sophie Geistererscbeinungen," G-erman, "Weimar, 1825 ; Grimm's " German Mythology."
These spirits, which stood in a mysterious relationship of life to individual persons, and to whole families, were more frequent in the English islands, where, and especially on the Faroes, they carried off men, — an unusual circum- stance in Norway and Sweden. In Germany there were Little Men of the Mines, AVild Women, Kobolds and Nixes, as may be learned from the legends of the brothers Grimm. The northern Necks resemble in many particulars the Naiads of the Greeks, as these are the protecting inha- bitants of small inland lakes, and mix themselves often in the afiiiirs of men, especially of enamoured youths and maidens, and therefore play a prominent part in the legends of the people, who usually give a waggish character to them, though legends say that they also draw men into the water and drown them. The Eokken or Necks belong to the evil portion of the elves of northern mythology, and, like the Yalkyrior, fearfully beautiful beings, are daughters neither of heaven nor of hell. They are the beautiful maids of Odin, sitting with helm and cuirass on flying horses. The subterranean Necks, who carry ofl" human beings, play a great part ; and there are many relations of midwives, and even princely ladies, who have been carried off, to aid some one of the Necks in the time of childbirth, and then have been recompensed with costly presents, such as golden rings, necklaces with diamond clasps, etc., which, through their magical power, have brought to the whole family prosperity and blessings. The elves came into Germany under the name of travelling, flying, good children, the little gracious ones, etc. The affinity of the German and northern elves is clear, and in the bloody drama of the witch-trials through- out Europe, the fays and elves played the same part in England and Scotland, and in the criminal proceedings were placed in the same category as the witch -spirits and social- devils in Germany and France. The elves, like the alrunes of the Druids, practised works of mercy in woods, and a certain sympathetic affinity with trees became thus pro- pagated in the popular faith. It is remarkable, also, that the German elves were accustomed to wander under the elder trees, as was the case still later in the witch- trials.
116 HISTOET OP MA.GHC.
"We have already made acquaintance with this tree and the laurel in association with the Grrecian oracles. The witches were accustomed to bury their elves under elder trees, with certain ceremonies, which shows that they were regarded as dangerous. AYhoever, during the period of the witch persecutions, found himself unexpectedly under an elder tree, was involuntarily seized with horror, and pro- bably fell into ecstasy.
Palacky, in his "History of Bohemia," says that in ancient times the Sclaves did not diiFer essentially from the Germans in their faith. " The Sclaves were," he remarks, " never a conquering and martially nomadic people, like the Grermans and Sarmatians, but lovers of peace and of a settled abode, and devoted to agriculture, the reariug of cattle, trade, and commerce. In the feeling of their common de- scent, they called themselves Serbs, — that is, allied people, and were always distinguished from their western neigh- bours by the name of Wends. The mode of life of these harmless people offered nothing which distinguished them essentially from the Grermans, yet their penchant for music, song, and dance, very early became a natural tendency. They believed in one highest Grod — Boh — the creator of the world, the original fountain of light and of lightning. This god received, as it appears, from the different races different names ; but the most prevailing one was Perun. Besides this, they worshipped many demons, called Diasi. Disor, in the northern mythology, are male and female, good and evil. The latter are called Biasi. Not only every natural phenomenon, but also human passions, were directed by the operation of such Diasi."
SECOND DIVISION.
THE MAGIC OE THE MIDDLE AGES.
THE SORCEEY OF WITCHCEAFT ; THE WITCH-TEIALS j POSSESSION ; EPIDEMIC CRAMPS.
A PAEALLEL of the heathen and Christian magic in their transition conducts us to the fundamental views of their consequent transformation to the magic of the middle ages, where they completed their degeneration into that adven- turous power of the Black Art, which professed to rule over heaven and hell, over life and death. We have now, as the result, to contemplate the application of witch-magic, as it particularly regards its origin, its development, and its end, in order to obtain a just judgment on that remarkable time.
Mantic and the seer-faculty was to the heathen a cer- tainty. It was the mighty influence of demoniac powers, which, as it were, had a direct, though it might be a secret, connection with life. Ever after, men believed these powers to be bound up with certain beings, — as, for instance, the fairies and elvos, — they were persuaded that these must be the real possessors of the gift of prophecy, which they im- part to men by a sympathetic means, when these, in some mysterious manner, come into closer proximity with them, either accidentally or purposely. In the heathen magic there was nothing miraculous : the proper reign of miracles commences with the Christian era. Eor, amongst the
118 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
heathens, the demons belonged, to a certain degree, to the sphere of the real world. The physical and supernatural were not so absolutely separated as Christianity separated the heaven from the earth, the eternal from the temporal, the spiritual from the natural. The ideas of truth and goodness, of beauty and virtue, of the reward and punish- ment of actions, and of immortality, advanced in all their clearness from the natural limits of time and space into the region of the supernatural. But, as everything ideal must have an image in representation, the human imagination, therefore, personified those ideas, according to their kind, in physical and natural shapes, such as the boldest fancy had never before arrived at. The spiritual being absorbed into the natural, was again transformed into the unna- tural ; and thus, as the darkened understanding separated the actual from the apparent, the natural from the spiritual powers, the inner from the outer, the imagi- gination had free play, and the divine and the human, spirit and nature, supernatural and physical, were mixed together, and so interchanged that a motley world of wonder and secresy might well arise. Men got into that state that they could not discriminate whether an unusual occur- rence were the result of foreign influence or of a physi- cal law. In heathendom their gods and spirits were still natural beings, and in an immediate connection with man ; they were, to a certain extent, of mortal descent, idealized out of the natural. But in Christianity the spirits were of an absolutely different substance, beings from ano- ther world exercising an influence upon this ; but neverthe- less of a mighty power, and so much the more terrible as they were from a strange world. The faith in sorcery and magic arts might be there as here general, and even have an influence on the proceedings of government ; but the " In- cantationes Magicse" of the Romans were directly denounced by civil laws as mischievous arts : on the contrary, the witch- trials were made over amongst Christians to the Inquisition, as the highest spiritual court, that it might afford assist- ance in withstanding the sorcery of the devil and his host. The sorcerer was to be regarded not merely as one who used his freedom to injure men, or as a deceiver, but as one to be condemned, being himself bewitched by a
MAGIC IN PAGAN AND CHEISTIAN TAITH. 119
superhuman spirit, and possessed by it. In the former case human deceit was condemned as mischievous ; here the man was punished with death as the vehicle or work-tool of the wicked one, or as identical wdth him. According to the pagan notion, the influence of spirits came from without ; according to that of the Judaic-Christian system, the devil entered into the body of the man, and before the sorcerer could cease to practise his arts he must be expelled thence by spiritual force. Amongst the heathen, an idiot was supposed to be made so by the elves ; the accused lunatic was said to be possessed. The elves stole the children of the heathen and left a changeling in its place : amongst the Christians, the devil entered the changeling. The devils, however, took possession of horses and cattle as well as of men, as Noisy Ghosts — Poltergeister. Amongst the heathen, at most, the little G-rey Man took up his quiet abode there, not to mock, but to help, — not to terrify and injure.
Amongst the Greeks and Eomans, where formerly Ho- meric, Virgilian, and O vidian gods presented themselves, and sorcery consisted in beautiful paintings of the imagina- tion, magic had a totally different character to that which it assumed in the Judaic- Christian faith, where the devil played the chief part. The magical arts were not, in old time, attributed to the influence of the powers of darkness, but to people who were in familiar intercourse with the gods and demons. The ancient German and northern elves ap- proximated nearer to those of the Christian world; yea, they constitute, to a certain degree, the foundation and the underwork of the following witch-period. Here men un- derstood by sorcery rather the operation of secret powers, which were ascribed to wicked men and fallen beings, and not to the gods who performed the higher miracles, and who merely worked for good. Among the ancient Germans only, a species of intermediate beings between God and men were considered as enchanted, deeply subtle giants and wicked giantesses, cunning elves and dwarfs, whose art was, in a manner, inborn. " The real sorcerer is the upward-striving man. By the side of his health-bringing practice a pernicious one developed itself. The original cause of all sorcery must have proceeded from the very bosom of the holiest, the united wisdom of all heathenism, operating on the worship
120
HISTORY OF MAGIC.
of the gods and the art of poetry. Sacrifices and singing passed over into representations of magic ; priests and poets, men admitted to the confidence of the gods, and participants of divine inspiration, soon merged into the diviner and sorcerer" (Gi-rimm, a. a. O. S. 579. The ancient Grermans were acquainted with sorcery and the sorcerer, but in the former, not in the latter character, where sorcery and the devil were all one. Properly, sorcery only signified the miraculous in certain persons, and the old Saxon word Wikken meant to divine or prophesy; and still, says G-rimm, Wikken, or "Wicheln, means to divine ; Wikker, a wizard, and Wichler, a witch or soothsayess.
There is no good in the world which "has not its opposite, or which may not become mischievous through its abuse. The revelation of the Christian religion is the greatest gift of Grod to man, and which is intended to enlighten the understanding and to soften the heart. But reason is erratic, and the heart is a member of Belial ; or does the heart follow the eye ? and does the understanding prove the depth and the movements of the heart ? Yes, there are people whose hearts, says the psalmist, will ever go astray, and the heart of a fool is like a vessel which will not hold water !
What confusions of the understanding have not arisen out of the teaching of the new religion ! And what abuses of reason have not led to the most insensate actions ! Instead of the true faith producing the noblest fruits of wisdom, power, and love, there arose the winter of a de- vouring superstition and of the most maniacal fanaticism ! It is, in fact, wonderful how the doctrines of religion can lead the human mind so completely into error and incon- sistency ; it is scarcely credible that Christianity, during the early period of proselytism from heathendom, should have conducted so many professors of its name to delusion and madness. Plebeians and nobles, young and old, put more living faith in a supernatural world of spirits than in Grod and physical nature. Their imagination created a heaven and an earth, and peopled them with opposing spirits, to whom they gave up man and the world as the arena of their warfare. The pious and the reckless entered into social ar- rangements with spirits likethemselves,nay evenintomarriage connections with them. Torturing pangs of conscience di'ove
THE MAGIC or THE MIDDLE AGES. 121
unhappy individuals to the confessions of sins, and many accused themselves of crimes which it was impossible for them to commit, and which the wise ones of the time, — learned theologians, physicians, and jurists, — endeavoured to demonstrate as possible with the most heated zeal, the most sophistical acumen, and the most incontestible facts. The belief in sorcery, and in compacts with the devil, rose to such a pitch of madness and of universal confusion of the Christian world, that men attributed to the devil the violent possession of innocent as well as guilty men ; and therefore took the field promiscuously against the defence- less, the unhappy, and the insane; sought and found upon them all the tokens of sorcery, and suspended over them all kinds of torments ; and, finally, drove many hun- dred thousands of vainly resisting wretches to death by fire and sword. The Hexen-hammer contains extraordinary memorials of that time of wonder, and of the highest pos- sible pitch of mental blindness and of horrible superstition which the human race ever arrived at on the earth. The whole of nature was converted into a world of sorcery ; no one any longer believed his own senses ; life was a sport of demons ; no one thought any more of fixed laws of nature ; all was miracle effected by supernatural spirit, but which had not the spirit of Christ, — love, as a result, but the terrors and the tyranny of hell.
Thus the idea of magic at that time was become totally different to its original one,— that of the art of inquiring into the secret powers of nature in order to use them to advan- tage. Now all extraordinary natural phenomena passed for the work of the devil, and were ascribed directly to certain spirits, or to men possessed by them : but, strictly speaking, all magic and sorcery, and all those marvellous appearances, were understood as the work of the devil.
If we inquire into the possible origin of so terrible a superstition, we may observe that we have the elements of it in the former heathenism on the one hand, and in the tone of mind introduced by Christianity on the other. Thereby the motives were given for carrying at once the mind from physical nature into the absolutely supernatural world, which had first been opened up by the idea of immortality and freedom of life after death.
122 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
In this manner we see how the belief in magic and miracle by degrees arose out of the root and grew into the full tree, with all the varied forms of the timea and of national culture ; and the hibtory of the witch-pro- secutions is no longer to be wondered at as an isolated fact, but to be studied as a singular and important judicial procedure.
The name of Hexe, Witch, comes originally, according to Keisler ("DeMulieribus fatidicis,antiq. septentrion. et celt.," 1720), from the word Haegse, a wise woman ; and Haegse from Hygia, according to Olaus Worm, in Lexico runico, which means wisdom. This word, says Keisler, was changed into Hesee, witch, and then signified a wicked woman who had a spirit of sorcery and divination, which meaning, after the introduction of the Christian religion, was connected with a sort of spectres, in the same manner that the Alrunes — those prophetic priestesses — came to mean the same thing, only in a ludicrous point of view. The Celtic Alrune is the oldest and general name of a soothsaying and sacred woman amongst the G-ermans, as we read in Caesar and Tacitus. "Wholly of the signification, according to Horst, is Alrune stil, in the Islandic, that is, witch in a good or bad meaning, — a know- ing woman, — Fiol Kuni; and a wizard, a much-knowing man, — Fiol Kuningar. Alrune means, literally, all or much- knowing, — from all, much, and runen, to know, inquire. This word had, therefore, no other signification than Magus, di\^ner, Mantic, soothsayer, prophet among-st other people. So said Cicero — " Sagae a sagiendo dictae, quia multa scire volunt. Sagire enim sentire acute est" (De Divinatione, lib. i.) Grimm derives Hexe, a witch, from Hegtese, old Saxon, and Hegese, English, Hag, and from hagi-^ artistic. Hexe is a subtle crafty woman ; Hexen, fascinare, Heig Heiang, seem to express sorcery. But, down to the seven- teenth century, the word Fiend was preferred to these unusual terms, which means diabolism. Drut, Druid, was synonymous with witch, and meant a plaguing and oppressive nightmare. Strix, Striga, Old French, estrie, Italian, streffa, stregora, — sorcerer. Originally, strix was a bird of sorcery. " Striges ab avibus ejusdem nominis, quia maleficae mulieres volaticae dicuntur" (Testus). . Christianity has altered the heathenish idea of witch-
INCREASING IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 128
craft in many ways ; yet there is an obvious agreement in it with the sacrifices, assemblies of the people, and the spirit- world of the ancient Germans. The Salic laws speak of such assemblings, of the cookery of the witches, and of witch kettles ; for more of which see Grimm.
These soothsaying women, at the period of the diffusion of Christianity, were very numerous in Germany and the north of Europe ; and, as they were equally frequent amongst the ancient votaries of the gods, and as those gods came to to be regarded as demons and evil spirits, thus, consequently, the strange doings of these women came to be regarded as produced by the help of demons, and the women them- selves as witches, and the accomplices of devils. It is certain that, in the early ages of the Church, the Fathers did not regard divination in this evil point of view. Clemens of Alexandria says (Stromat., lib. i. p. 97) — " There are amongst the Germans so called prophetic women, who, ac- cording to the running of the river, and the form of the waves, etc., divine, and foretell future events." Later, when the dreams of spirits, and a superstitious belief in the devil and spectres so increased, that in the middle ages all the elements were full of spirits, undines, kobolds, and salamanders ; when an especial power was acknowledged in the formulae of sorcery, to exorcise and banish spectres ; when every phenomenon of nature, and even the severest sick- nesses, were attributed to the influence of the devil ; when people, by a proneness to subjective groping, and to a rabid fanaticism, without any attention to an objective knowledge of nature and to genuine religious revelation, confused the sign with the thing, interposed the vision of the thing for the thing itself; when thepeople came in the excitement of this madness to confess impossibilities, and the educated world of judges and clergymen accepted the maniacal confessions of weak and sickly persons as perfectly valid " Species facti," and judged accordingly ; — then had the Black Arts, in fact, their highest bloom, and the devil reached the summit of his power, and the name of witch was a word of terror for young and old, for small and great. And now was the time which, alas ! stands in history as a horrible evidence of the total confusion and utter degeneracy of the human mind, when witches were no longer prophetic women,
124 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
but malicious, fortune -telling sorceresses : " Quae nunc pessimam incantatricem et sagam notat," says Keisler, *' olim a radice Haegse, mulier sapiens erat, prudens ac ratione valens."
The whole Christian world, from the sixteenth and seven- teenth to the eighteenth century, was so sunk in the idea of witchcraft, that all ranks and classes may be regarded as actually bewitched ; for whoever did not so deem himself was accused and denounced as being so ; and every natural occurrence was the work of witches, — as lightning and hail, milk turning sour, the loss of swine, all sorts of diseases in men and cattle, — as cramps, lamenesses, swell- ings, impotence, etc. One especial kind of witchcraft was the appearance of all kinds of things in different parts of the body, — as thread and laces, worsted and yarn, potsherds, needles, and nails ; nay, even living things, — as lizards, toads and mice, worms and frogs, that were conjured into the stomach. The witches cooked their own broth, and prepared their own butter and salve, with which they made themselves invisible. They made the witch-butter, — co- operante diabolo, — from the aurora- coloured matter exuded from the bodies of children which they had stolen and carried off to the Blocksberg. The witches and wizards had among themselves a widely-spread secret confederation ; they had a peculiar worship in solemn expeditions through the air, with lusty dances and merrymakings in remote places, — particularly in deserts and on lofty mountains. The Blocks- berg was in Germany the great place of assembly where the whole tribe congregated out of all Christendom, under the guidance of Beelzebub, with whom they made a pact, which they confirmed by writing their names in a book with their own blood, and then sealing it, and had even carnal intercourse with him. They had especial festival days, as Friday — the witches' Sabbath. They made their flight on sticks, broom- sticks, or on he-goats, through wind and storm. As they foresaw the future, they knew all the secrets of rich men and . of princes, and no one any longer doubted the truth when a reputed witch or wizard accused the most innocent person of sorcery, for they were supposed to have learned all in their nocturnal visions. jN^either by the revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nor through the E-eforma-
THE WITCH-HAMMEE. 125
tion, were these deeply-rooted opinions regarding witchcraft and the influence of evil spirits on nature and men extirpated ; they continued in all countries rather amongst the Protes- tants than amongst Catholics ; and at Clarus in Switzerland a witch was executed in 1780. The most enlightened scholars and natural philosophers were of no avail in disseminating the light, and in subduing the general madness ; they could only prepare the way for gradually undermining the power which the belief in sorcery had attained, and for making it in- noxious. There was, in fact, no longer, even amongst the learned and accomplished, any doubt of the influence of the devil.
"Man's highest strength, his noblest parts, His learning, science, and his arts, Now give themselves to sorceries, And to the Father of all hes."
The professors of laws now collected assiduously all tales of sorcery, and the Collegium logicum became a Will-of-the wisp, and the philosopher stepped in and demonstrated that it must be so. In the year 1484 the witch-persecution was formally introduced into Germany by a bull of Pope Inno- cent Vlll. ; and in the year 1489 appeared a publication under public authority, under the title, " Malleus male- FiCAEUM," — the AVitch-hammer, — which became the code of action in the witch-prosecutions. There was, alas ! no question as to the right which is born with us ; reason be- came nonsense, benefaction a pestilence. The spirit of medicine is easy of comprehension ; men studied the great and the little world through and through, in order to attain to an end. Celebrated physicians continued, even into the eighteenth century, to regard the so-called mischief of the evil-eye and of sorcery not as natural symptoms, nor as the reckless artifices of revengeful men — though plenty of these presented themselves on the witch-trials ; but they pro- nounced them to be diseases immediately produced by the devil. They regarded the mulberry-marks found on the chest from nightmare, or on diflerent parts of the body, sometimes in blue and yellow spots, and caused by cramps, to be certain signs of supernatural phenomena.
The highest law with the Theologians was that of Moses : — " Thou ehalt not sufler a witch to live" (Exod. xxii. 18).
126 HISTOEY OF MAGIC.
According to the Witcb-liaramer, the theological-juridical commentary of the criminal code of the Sorcery-Bill, the belief in the paramour-devils, and in their participation with the witch-host in all kinds of vice and lewdness, was an indisputable axiom, and the death by fire an unassailable right and command. The universal superstition contributed decidedly to make the imagination, already excited by stories, by religious fanaticism, by delusion of the senses, and dis- ease, completely mad ; and in the Inquisition it was often observed in the confession during witch-trials, that a par- tially fixed idea became confirmed during the inquiry. The bewitchment of the senses in such an excited condition of mind was by no means difficult, in order to convert the de- lusions of appearance into reality, or to give to reality the impressicm of illusion. Eor illusion becomes permanent although at first it may be known to be mere deception, where any one repeatedly treats it as reality, or where even any one simulates or firmly maintains a deception ; as Mengs has remarked, that figures put themselves into mo- tion if you continue to look at them for a long time. There- fore, the confession of visions and of appearances of men, animals, and devils, is easy of solution ; the journeys through the air, so frequently related, find analogous scenes amongst the magnetic and other visions, and the spiritual intercourse, and all circumstances of fear and of fancy, with their results, originate in the same causes. As to the disconnected images and representations of the metamorphoses of beasts and men, — ghosts and blood-sucking vampires, who were the objects of the grossest superstition, especially in Hungary and Servia, — witch-worship, dances, and feasts, — it is less to be wondered at that such creatures of fantasy should be conceived, than that people should universally believe them, when, at least, in the beginning, the accused denied their existence, and suftered no tortures to extort a confession from them. There were, however, all sorts of books and writings which taught how people might be brought into intercourse with spirits ; there were also witch- powders and salves which produced a kind of somnambu- lism in which stupifying herbs, as aconite, which, according to Cardan, produces a sensation of flying; hyoscyamus, taxus, hypericum, and assafoetida, sulphur, and glass of anti-
WITCH-PROSECTJTIONS. 127
rconj, were used. They rubbed themselves in various parts of the body with the salve, in which narcotics, garlic, etc., were used ; and nymphomania, hysteria, and somnambulic visions were the consequences. For behind the curtains of magic and miraculous works lay concealed the unclean spirits in the natural flesh, which were not restrained. According to Jung Stilling, in " Theobald, or the Fanatic," vol. i. p. 244, the religious excitement often flows from a very impure source ; and he states that a fanatic society appeared in the thirtieth year of the last century, in which such transports followed the rubbing and kneading of the body in a magnetic manner, and those in whom rhese took place were said to be new-born. It, therefore, de- pended entirely on the explanation whether in these scenes of excited feeling and of the lii'e of the imagination, the result should be held to be a witch-exploit and dealing with the devil, or a vision of holiness ; for the former were not always engrafted on sinful propensities and low desires, nor were the latter always the fruits of a pure mind and of genuine love. Spasms and all sorts of convulsive appear- ances accompanied invariably both exhibitions, which, how- ever, in witchcraft terms were only attributed to the power of hell ; and on that account, as Moses formerly, they be- lieved themselves called upon to drive forth the devil and all his host with fire and sword.
There were very frequently such unusual appearances con- nected with those spasms, as are now often witnessed in mag- netism, and which people in that dark time were not in a condition to treat as the consequences of abnormal processes of nature, but attributed to the evil principle ; believing the spasms and accompanying phenomena to be the work of the devil, and those who suffered under them as possessed by him. Thus we read in the witch-trials tliat during the most horrible convulsions of the limbs, visions were seen revealing secrets of so deep a nature that the devil only knew them ; that those who were considered to be bewitched (as those afilicted with St. Vitus's dance, epilepsy, or in the most terrible agitations of madness) not only fell to the ground, but sprung up walls, and climbed up on high, were carried up into the air, and danced, leaped, and made evolutions of the body which were inconceivable and impossible to men in health ; and that such
128 HISTOET OF MAGIC.
persons ran here and there, and turned about at a surprising rate without any injury. So, also, under the torture, those accused of witchcraft, as in a state of catalepsy, were partially insensible to every agony, to stab and blow, to pinching and burning, and even fell asleep under the most terrific attempts at torture, feeling no pain whatever. As in hysterical cases, their bodies were now blown up like a barrel, without burst- ing ; then again were drawn in as if they were totally gone, and as suddenly again puffed up like a pair of bellows, and with the loudest noises, as if struck, moved up and down, sunk and swelled again. From the different parts of the bodies of the bewitched all sorts of materials and working implements made their way: as worms, egg-shells, hairs, cloth, yarn, pins, needles, glass, etc. ; whilst others, on the contrary, for long periods took no nourishment, and yet retained the strength and fulness of their bodies.
The natural causes of these phenomena we see as clearly from the accounts of the witch-prosecutions, — those terrible spectacles of blindness, — as out of the individual bio- graphies and the reports of the stout assailants of the witch- faith. As that of Tartarelli in " Del congresso notturno delle lamie. Lib. tre S'aggiungono due dissertazione sopra I'arte magica, E-overedo, 1750." " A Short Epitome of the Crimes of "Witchcraft with the Actis Magicis of Johann Eeichen, 1703." " Maffei dell' Ossa, Balthazar Becker, die bezauberte "Welt, Amsterdam, 1693." " Christian Tho- masius de crimine magise, 1701." "Deorigine et progressu inquisitionis contra sagas, 1712." Also in German, " En- quiry into the origin and progress of the prosecutions of the Inquisition against witches." " Free thoughts, or monthly conversations, — the history of wisdom and folly." " Wier, de Prestigiis dsemonum." " Eeginald Scott, Discovery of "Witchcraft, London, 1602." " Nicolai de magicus artibus, tractatus singularis philosophico-theologicus et historicus, 164-9." " Fried. Spee, Cautio criminalis, sive de processibus contra sagas, liber ad magistratus Grermanise vox tempore necessarius, etc. Eintel, 1631. In German, "The Book of conscience on the trials against the witches." It first showed the physiological foundation of the false pictures of imagination. All these showed and described the natural ground and cause of those phenomena to be the Satanic
GOOD AT^D EVTL SPJ-RITS. 129
persecution of the courts of justice. No land and no people were behind the rest in this cursed drama, as Semler calls it, — every party in religion vied with the others for the first rank in the persecution of witches ; hundreds of thousands were sacrificed, and misery spread its wings of darkness everywhere. Even the sick, and children of from nine to fourteen years of age, as well as old men, were struck by the destroying power ; neither the traveller journeying on his way, nor yet even " the blind maiden, were spared." People of rank, consideration, and wealth, were often, from envy, revenge, or hatred, accused of witchcraft, because their understanding made them more distinguished, their diligence richer, and their rank more honoured. The protestations of innocence were treated as lies; the anguish and terror of the accused were regarded as proofs of guilt ; and they who cou- rageously stood firm by the truth had, by hours of continued torture, lies pressed out of them, for death only ended such misery. Auber, in recording these facts — Acta scripta magica — prays the reader, and especially those who had not seen the depths of Satan, and who always seem to think that in the doctrine of the bodily power of the devil there is something almost divine and true, to reflect, " per viscera Christi," who would probably have escaped with his life, if a stop had not been put to these fire-murders ?
We have already seen, in our notice of paganism, the foun- dations of the belief in sorcery amongst Christians ; we have now to take a nearer view of the further extension of the magic and witch-faith in Christianity down to the witch persecutions, which were no isolated appearances, but, as it were, a necessary development of a deeply-rooted germ.
The idea of two contending principles arose very early in the East. The apparently hostile powers of nature, and also the morally base, occasioned philosophy to accept of two higher, opposed primeval beings, the bad near to the good, and exercising a secret influence on nature and on man. On this notion rested especially the religious doctrines of Zoroaster, according to whom Ormuzd was the author of light, and Ahriman the author of darkness, the principle of evil. Both principles had their ministerino^ spirits. The Amschaspands and the Izeds were the good spirits, and the Devs were the bad ones under the rule of
VOL. II. K
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Aliriman. " The representations of absolute evil, pf the devil and devilish spirits, which afterwards took such fast and universal hold on the public mind, were unknown to our pagan progenitors. A total ideal distinction between a good and an evil spirit is equally unknown to the Greek, the Indian, and our old German theology" (Grimm, S. 549).
It seems certain that the Jews, during their Assyrian captivity, acquired for the most part their notions respecting Satan and good and evil angels. In the history of the cre-ition, Moses speaks nothing of Satan or the devil, but only of the serpent, " which was more subtle than all the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made." It is true that there lies an undeniable principle of treachery in the idea of the serpent ; and the devil, as the author of wicked- ness and the opposer of God, is originally contained in the Jewish religion, although not so fully demonstrated till the Eabylonish captivity. The word Satan presents itself a few "times in the Old Testament ; as in Samuel, 2nd book, xix. 22, where David says, " What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that you should thus be Satan* to me ?" Then in 1st Book of Chronicles, c. 21, — "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." " Through the envy of the devil death is come into the world," — Wisdom, ii. 24. But Satan first stands forth in person in Job : " So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils," etc. And he mingled amongst the children of God, and entered into a dialogue with the Lord, which is of genuine Oriental cha- racter,— Chap. i. ver. 6 — 13.
" 6. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
" 7. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou ? Then Satan answered the Lord and said. From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
" 8. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou con- sidered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil ?
* Thus rendered in the German Bible.
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" 9 . Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought ?
" 10. Hast not thou made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side ? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is in- creased in the land.
"11. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.
" 12. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power ; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord."
In the second chapter Satan holds the same dialogue with the Lord, with the request that he may stretch forth his hand, and touch Job's flesh and bone ; whereupon the Lord gave him into Satan's hand, with this condition, that he should spare his life : — " Then went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head." It is clear that the pious and sorely afllicted Job had somnambulic visions, which the whole conversation of Satan with the Lord shows, and which is also plainly declared. Thus, in the conversation with his wife, — ii. 9 ; and again, iv. 12 — 16.
" 12. Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a little thereof.
"13. In thoughts of the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men,
" 14. Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
" 15. Then a spirit passed before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up :
" 16. It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes," etc.
And further, — " Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifyest me with visions" — viii. 14. And again, — " .For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit."
The whole extraordinary book of Job has been by nume- rous commentators asserted not to be of a period earlier . than the captivity. Of this opinion are Michaelis, Do- derlein, and Hufnagel; and Ilorst, in his " Damonomagic," says, — " From this time forward as the Jews lived amongst
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the admirers of Zoroaster, and thus became acquainted with his doctrines, we find, partly in contradiction to the earlier views of their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst them, the origin of which it is impossible to explain, except by the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster. To these belong the general acceptance of the theory of Satan, as well as of good and bad angels (see the Handbook of the History of the Church, by J. E. C. Schmidt).
All the different descriptions of the existence and influ- ence of evil spirits, as they have come down to us, have been modified by Christianity. The devil is altogether Jewish, Christian, heathen, idolatrous, and spectral. As the heathen gods disappeared Christianity stooped to dualism, and the gnostic philosophy endeavoured to establish the universal principle of good and evil. " The name of Devil," says Grimm, " is un- German, and is nothing else than the retained hcifioXoc ; and our Angel, both in word and idea, is thence also derived. Tiebil, Tieval, Diefal, are used by the Yulgate for daemonium ; and in Ulfilas is Diabaulus, Satana, and Un- hultho, translated by ^atfxoviov."
By Angel in the Old Testament, according to the original text, was understood an officer to carry a message ; and thence messenger, one sent of God : on which account also the teachers and preachers in the Old and New Testaments are called " Publishers of glad tidings." Some commen- tators in this sense understand in Isaiah, xxxiii. ver. 7, by Angels of Peace, the messengers of the Assyrians to the Jews, and of the Jews to the Assyrians. In the Old Tes- tament the appearances in the visions are caUed angels, as appearing to Moses, Abraham, etc. When the angel ap- peared a second time to Hagar, he promised to make of Ishmael a great people.
" The doctrine of angels," says Gottfried Biichner (Bib- lische Eeal- und Yerbalconcordanzien, 1757), "is for the most part covered with darkness : here reason cannot see far ; and the knowledge which we derive from the Scriptures is equally small. "We do not know properly what a spirit is, and how it can move a body. Whether this class of beings think as we do ; how they explain their ideas one to another ; are questions as much buried under uncertainty. Eeason, in- deed, finds nothing absurd in the existence of spirits, since the
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Scriptures clearly reveal it ; but perceives, at the same time, that it is not contrary to the goodness, wisdom, and omni- potence of God, to have created such beings. But much further it cannot advance ; it must content itself with proba- bility, and it does so when it accepts, in faith, the divine assurances, and does not suffer itself to be disturbed at what a good and wise God has concealed from its knowledge."
Whence we infer, that we can as little deny as we can prove the existence of objective spirits ; but that there is nothing in the theory contrary to reason, that God in his great household should have such, and should permit them to have an influence on the spirits of men. On this subject, in an article in the " Archeolog. Phil., p. 68," T. Burnet says : — " Facile credo, plures esse natui^as invisibiles in rerum universitate, sed harum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit ? Et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singularum munera ! quid agunt, quae loca habitant ? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat interea, non diifiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari, ne mens assuefacta hodieruae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea vigilandum est, mo- dusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte distin- guamas."
It is very certain that impulses of spirits towards men are not so common as we fancy, for the psychological repre- sentations of all kind of phenomena proceed out of the un- divided nature of the living man, and for the most part through a physical process, as I have shown in my " Mag- netism in relation to Nature and EeKgion." It would not be, according to that belief, so very absurd to consider that man is influenced directly by God, without this influence being communicated through angels ; while this influence has assumed to itself a form according to the language and ideas of men ; as the Izeds of the East, the Angels of the Jews, the Dis of the Germans, and the Saints of the Middle Ages.
There is, indeed, no foundation in the Bible for the idea that every man has his guardian angel, since we see that one angel is given to many men (Daniel, iii. 28), and again many to one
13 i HISTOKT OF MAGTC.
man. Thus an angel smote of the people, when David took a census of them, sixty thousand. An angel smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand men. On the other hand, the angels are represented in multitudes as engaged for particidar purposes, and there is something venerable, excellent, and grand in the idea. For example, David pleased Achis as an angel of God. I. Sam, xxix. 9 — " And my lord is wise with the wisdom of an angel."