comparative witchcraft.—laws against sorcery.—magic in virgil and horace.—demonology.—images of wax and clay.—transference of disease.—witchcraft in the koran.—white magic and black.—coral and the evil eye.—“overlooking” people.—exorcism in the catholic church.
comparative witchcraft.
“witches and impostors,” said bacon, “have always held a competition with physicians.” the history of medicine, therefore, demands some notice of the strange delusions which have exerted the most terrible influence over the minds of men in all ages and in all stages of civilization. nothing in the history of the human species is older than the belief in magic, and it will be found that the practices of the savage in this connection have their analogies amongst ourselves at the present day. gipsy craft, fortune telling, dream interpretation, spiritualism, the miracles of the theosophists, may all be traced in the customs and practices of savage tribes. they are survivals which will not be got rid of probably for centuries to come. education, so far from delivering us from the bondage, has curiously enough in many cases served but to rivet the chains more firmly. in the chapters on the demon theory of disease, much light has been thrown on the origin of our belief in the influence of spirits good and bad. trials in england connected with witchcraft were most numerous in the seventeenth century. the most interesting is that of the suffolk witches, when sir matthew hale was the judge and sir thomas browne the medical expert witness. this excellent and learned physician testified that certain children, said to have been bewitched, suffered from fits, heightened to great excess by the subtlety of the devil co-operating with the witches. the report alleges that after conviction of the accused the children immediately recovered.
while condemning the cruelty and severity of the laws against witchcraft, and reflecting on the injustice and ignorance with which they were enforced, we must remember that in many cases sorcerers and other dabblers in black magic have added to their supposed supernatural methods the very real and serious arts of the poisoner, and the not less404 real, though purely mental influences of terror and alarm. to know that an evil-minded person was compassing one’s death or was busied in bringing about, by diabolical influences, some dreadful sickness or other injury to one’s person, was quite sufficient, in ignorant and superstitious times, to effect all the evil which it was in the mind of the magician or witch to induce. but probably there never was a regular professional sorcerer who did not use the actual weapons of poison, or deleterious drugs of some kind or other, to assist his evil intentions. in the case of the trial of the countess of somerset, in 1616, a charge of witchcraft was joined with the charge of poisoning sir thomas overbury.949 witchcraft and murder were combined in the master of orkney’s case. the last case ever brought before the “chambre ardente” in france resulted in the condemnation, in 1680, of a woman named voisin, for sorcery and poisoning, in connection with the marquise de brinvilliers. but even apart from considerations of material injury, the mental impressions are often fatal enough; thus, in the pacific islands, to quote but one instance, magical arts have been proved effective through the patient’s own imagination. “when he knows or fancies that he has been bewitched, he will fall ill, and he will actually die unless he can be persuaded that he has been cured. thus, wherever sorcery is practised with the belief of its victims, some system of exorcism or some protective magical art becomes, not only necessary, but actually effective—a mental disease being met by a mental remedy to match it.”950 hearne, when travelling in north america, was entreated by an indian to give him a charm against an enemy (savages and primitive folk are great believers in white men as magicians). hearne complied, and for fun, drew on a sheet of paper some circles, signs, and words. the indian took care to let his victim know that he had “medicine” against him, and the poor wretch fell sick immediately, and shortly afterwards died. cockayne quotes from wier an account of a woman who wore an amulet to cure bad eyes, which were made worse by her constantly flowing tears. some one who hated sorceries induced her to open and examine the charm. when unfolded, the paper showed nothing but these words: “may the devil scratch thine eyes out, and—— in the holes.” as soon as the woman saw how she had been deceived, she lost faith, took to crying again, and her eyes became as bad as ever.951
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law against sorcery.
at the accession of james i. of england, a law against witchcraft was passed, which continued in force for more than a century. we quote it in full (1 jac. i. c. 12):—
“if any person or persons shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body or any part thereof, every such offender is a felon without benefit of clergy.”
magic and medicine.
pliny says that the art of magic first originated in medicine, and that under the guise of promoting health it insinuated itself among mankind as a higher and more holy branch of the medical art. then it added the religious element, and lastly incorporated with itself the astrological art, and so enthralled the senses of man by a three-fold bond.952
magic in virgil and horace.
the sorceress of virgil is a witch whose ancestry we shall have no difficulty in tracing anthropologically. we can discover her lineage from the parent witches of savage tribes, and we detect her offspring in the sorceress of our own times. she burns vervain and frankincense, chaunts a solemn lay, binds the victim’s image with fillets of three colours, and in binding the knots makes the attendant say, “thus do i bind the fillets of venus.” one wax and one clay image are placed before the fire, and as the clay image hardens, so does the heart of daphnis harden towards his new mistress; and as the wax softens, so is the heart of daphnis made tender towards the sorceress. she buries the relics of what had belonged to daphnis beneath her threshold; bruises poisonous plants from pontus to enable him to transform himself into a wolf, and orders her attendant to cast the ashes of these herbs over her head into a running stream, at the same406 time taking care not to glance behind her.953 horace also describes the concoction of a charm in a perfectly orthodox style whose family history is intelligible enough to the student of comparative sorcery. there is nothing in the classic witchcraft which does not exist to-day in the islands of savage peoples, and the methods of medicine-men in primitive forests.
images of wax, etc., in sorcery.
a very widespread and ancient method of compassing a person’s death by witchcraft is that of making a figure in wax, or other plastic material, to represent the victim of the incantation. the object seems to be the concentration of will-power to effect the wishes of the user of the charm. there is an innate belief that words are creative symbols; it may be derived from the perception of the power of man to effect that which he desires earnestly to effect, so that “whenever a good or evil wish,” as dr. tylor says, “is uttered in words, it becomes a blessing or curse.” this idea lies at the root of what is called “christian science healing,” i.e. healing by good wishes. in its evil form we have an ancient example in ovid’s sorceress:954—
king james, in his d?monology, says that “the devil teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay, that by roasting thereof the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or dried away by continual sickness.”
so the governor-general of a chinese province recently issued a proclamation, whereby it was declared unlawful to bring about the death of others by incantations. “you are forbidden,” said governor wang, “if you have a grudge against any one, to practise the magic called ‘striking the bull’s head,’ that is to say, writing a man’s name and age on a scrap of paper, and laying it before the bull-headed idol, and then buying an iron stamp and piercing small holes in this paper, and finally throwing it at the man on the sly, with the intention of compassing his death.”955
“so recently,” says the authoress of wanderings in china,407 “as december, 1883, a case was tried at the inverness police court, in which the cause of offence was the discovery of a clay image with pins stuck through it in order to compass the death of a neighbour, a discovery which resulted in an assault. many similar cases have been discovered both in england and scotland.”956
“the demon-priests of ceylon,” says gomme,957 “make use of images of wax or wood, which represent the person to be injured. they drive nails into the points which represent the heart, the head, etc., mark the name of the intended victim on it, and bury it where he is likely to pass over it.” plato alludes to the same practice as obtaining amongst the greeks of his period.958
there are very similar scotch practices.
it was anciently believed that diseases could be transferred from one person to another. says pliny,959 “take the parings of the toe-nails and finger-nails of a sick person and mix them up with wax, the party saying that he is seeking a remedy for a tertian, quartan, or quotidian fever, as the case may be; then stick this wax, before sunrise, upon the door of another person. such is the prescription they give for these diseases.”
gomme says960 that st. tegla’s well, about half-way between wrexham and ruthin, is resorted to for the cure of epilepsy. the patient offers a cock, or if a woman, a hen. the bird is carried in a basket, first round the well, and then round the church. the patient enters the church, creeps under the altar, and remains there till morning. having made an offering, he leaves the cock and departs. if the bird dies, it is supposed that the disease has been transferred to it, and the man or woman consequently cured.
the use of wax figures in enchantments is, as we have shown, very ancient, and it has lasted up to the present time. sim?tha in theocritus says: “as i melt this wax by the help of the goddess, so may myndian delphis be presently wasted by love.”961 and horace refers to it:—
“lanea et effigies evat, altera cerea.”
(lib. i., sat. 8, l. 30.)
paracelsus advises the patient afflicted with st. vitus’ dance to make an image of himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of mind to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it, “without the intervention of any other person, to set his whole mind and thoughts concerning these oaths on the image.” having done this, he was to destroy the image by fire.962
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pliny says963 that abrotonum (which was probably southernwood), “if put beneath the pillow, will act as an aphrodisiac, and that it is of the very greatest efficacy against all those charms and spells by which impotence is produced.” as an antaphrodisiac he recommends the tamarisk, mixed in a drink or in food with the urine of an ox.964
amongst the tamils of ceylon there is a ceremony performed with the skull of a child, with the design of producing the death of the person against whom the incantation is directed. cabalistic figures are drawn upon the skull after it has been duly prepared. the name of the person to be destroyed by the charm is also written on the skull. then a paste is composed with his saliva, some of his hair, and a little earth on which he has imprinted his footsteps, and this is spread upon a plate, and taken with the skull to the cemetery of the place, where for forty nights the evil spirits are invoked to destroy the denounced person. the natives believe that as the paste dries on the plate, the victim of the charm will waste and die.965
“both greeks and savages,” says mr. a. lang,966 “have worshipped the ghosts of the dead. both greeks and savages assign to their gods the miraculous powers of transformation and magic, which savages also attribute to their conjurors or shamans. the mantle (if he had a mantle) of the medicine-man has fallen on the god; but zeus, or indra, was not once a real medicine-man.”
in the kalevala the hero of the poem wounds himself with an axe. the wound can only be healed by one who knows the mystic words that hold the secret of the birth of iron. iron is the bane of warlike men; when the wizard curses the iron as a living thing, the hero is healed.967
knots.
justin martyr says that the jews used magic ties or knots in their exorcisms. the babylonians did the same. when the god marduk writes to soothe the last moments of a dying man, hea says, “take a woman’s linen kerchief, bind it round thy right hand; loose it from the left hand, knot it with seven knots; do so twice.”968
the 113th chapter of the koran was written by mohammed when he was suffering from an illness of a rheumatic character, and he believed that it was caused by some evil person who had bewitched him. the chapter runs thus:—
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“say, i fly for refuge unto the lord of the daybreak, that he may deliver me from the mischief of those things which he hath created; and from the mischief of the night when it cometh on; and from the mischief of woman blowing on knots; and from the mischief of the envious, when he envieth.” sales’ notes on this chapter explain the singular expression about knots; he says: “that is, of witches, who used to tie knots in a cord, and to blow on them, uttering at the same time certain magical words over them, in order to debilitate the person they had a mind to injure.” wizards in the north who pretend to sell mariners a wind do something similar, and the french nou?r l’aiguillete is of the same character. this bewitchment by the knot was called by the romans nodus and obligamentum. mr. cockayne says969 the saxons translated it into lyb, drug, φ?ρμακον. it was believed that a man might lose his power by being put under a knot, and there are cures for this injury in the leechbook. we find protections “contra maleficium ligatur? ut vocant.” priests are warned not to make any alterations in the mode of conducting the marriage service by any reason of these knots.970
of course, as in all other kinds of witchcraft, actual poisons often had much to do with the magic.
white magic.
as there is white magic, which according to popular belief is beneficent, and black magic, which is diabolical and hurtful, so there are white witches and black ones. the white can help, but not hurt. cotta says:971 “the mention of witchcraft doth now occasion the remembrance in the next place of a sort of practitioners whom our custome and country doth call wise men and wise women, reputed a kind of good and harmless witches or wizards, who by good words, by hallowed herbes, and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to allay and calme divels, practices of other witches, and the forces of many diseases.” the last lingering remains of such wise women may be found in the poorer quarters of all our great towns as well as in country places; they sell herbs, and always have a special ointment or salve which cures everything. this is called “old maids’ salve,” or some such name, and the sellers may often be known by the pile of little chip or willow boxes displayed in a shop or front window in back streets. “white” as they are, they often, it is suspected, give improper advice to women.
a third species of witch was recognised—a mixture of white and black, called grey witches, who could help and hurt.972
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blaise pascal, when an infant a year old, was supposed to have been bewitched by an old woman, who ultimately confessed that she had in fact so influenced his health.
black magic.
the following “revelation” of the proceedings of sorcerers is from the mysteries of magic by waite,973 and was taken by him from the works of eliphas lévi.974
“they procure either some of the hair or garments of the person whom they wish to curse; then they choose an animal which they consider the symbol of that person by means of the hair or garments; they place this animal in magnetic rapport with the individual; they give it his name, then they slay it with one blow of the magic knife, open its breast, tear out the heart, which they envelop while still palpitating in the magnetised object, and for three days they hourly pierce this heart with nails, red-hot pins, or long thorns, pronouncing maledictions at the same time on the name of the bewitched person. they are then convinced (and often rightly) that the victim of their infamous man?uvres experiences as many torments as if he had himself been probed to the heart with every one of the points. he begins to waste away, and at the end of a certain time dies of an unknown complaint.” another proceeding is to take a large toad, “baptism is administered to it, and it is given the name and surname of the person whom it is desired to curse; it is made to swallow a consecrated host whereon the formul? of execration have been pronounced; then it is enveloped in the magnetised objects, bound with the hair of the victim, on which the operator has previously spat, and the whole is buried either beneath the threshold of the bewitched person’s door or in a place which he is bound to pass daily.”975
the most important part of the body of a person to be bewitched is a tooth, but the hair or blood will answer fairly well.
the evil eye.
the use of red coral for warding off the evil eye is at least as old as the times of the ancient romans; they used coral necklaces for their babies as we do now, but not for ornament so much as for protection from supernatural danger. in italy, especially in the parts round naples, red coral charms in the shape of a partly closed hand, or pieces of coral the shape of a tiny carrot, are worn for the purpose of protecting the wearer from being bewitched by the mal occhio.
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the last-named charm is evidently phallic.
the belief in witchcraft which still exists not only amongst the ignorant and degraded, but also amongst cultivated and intelligent persons, has recently been illustrated by two cases reported in the press, which it may be well to quote in this connection.
“extraordinary superstition.
“an inquest was held yesterday at lufton, a village near yeovil, on the body of mary jane saunders, aged twenty-two, who died under peculiar circumstances. the evidence of the sister of the deceased showed the latter took to her bed last october. a doctor attended her, and in november she went into yeovil hospital. deceased had not had her reason for the last six weeks. her father and mother called in a herbalist, who remained one day and night. her mother thought her daughter was suffering from a ‘bad wish,’ and that it was in consequence of that she was ill. her mother had heard that the herbalist had cured two people at montacute of ‘bad wishes,’ and that was why they went to him. the herbalist made some herb tea for deceased to get rid of the ‘bad wish.’ her father and mother thought the deceased had been ‘overlooked.’ the father told the coroner he was ‘overlooked’ when he was a baby, and had a spell on him, and some one did him good. the herbalist who visited deceased said he thoroughly believed one person could put a spell on another. it was in the bible, but it was a pity it should be so. the mother of deceased said they thought some one had cast a ‘bad wish’ over the deceased, and they tried to get it taken away. they paid 11s. for the herbalist’s medicine to remove the ‘bad wish.’ dr. walters said deceased died of inflammation and softening of the brain, and a verdict in accordance with that opinion was returned.”976
the daily telegraph of november 21st, 1892, has the following:—
“trial for witchcraft.
”berlin, nov. 20.—the court of eichstaett in bavaria has just given judgment in the action for slander arising out of the extraordinary case of exorcism which occurred some months ago in bavaria, when a certain father aurelian exorcised a boy named zilk in his parish, who was said to be possessed of a devil.
“father aurelian declared that the evil spirit entered the boy’s body through the witchcraft of a protestant woman named herz, and the latter accordingly instituted proceedings against him for slander. the ceremony of exorcism was performed in presence of a capuchin friar.412 named wolf, and other persons, and father aurelian, in the report which he drew up of the case, declared that the devil only quitted the boy after long resistance.
“friar wolf, who was one of a long list of witnesses called for the defence, confirmed the correctness of the defendant’s report as to the circumstances under which the exorcism had been performed.
“father pruner, the provost of the cathedral, who was called to give evidence as to the theological aspects of the matter, testified that, according to the teaching of the church, the possibility of demoniac possession was indisputable; and he gave an account of the doctrine concerning demons and evil spirits. he declared that father aurelian had recognised the signs of possession as taught by the schools, and had acted as he ought to have done under the circumstances. after pointing out that even the civil law recognised the possibility of covenants between mankind and the devil, he went on to affirm that the church could compel the devil to speak the truth. this was to support the line of defence set up by father aurelian that before quitting the body of the boy the devil himself, speaking through the possessed, had informed him that frau herz had bewitched the boy by means of some fruit which she had given him.
“prior schneider, who was summoned as an expert in demonology, also explained his views on the spirit world.
“herr straub, the public prosecutor, said the question before the court was not whether father aurelian had transgressed the law in exorcising the boy, but whether he had slandered the plaintiff. this, he maintained, the defendant had done, and he demanded damages to the extent of fifty marks, asking this small sum because it was not contended that frau herz had suffered any material loss through the allegations made against her.
“frau herz, in evidence, denied having bewitched the boy, and declared that the fruit had not been given to zilk by her, but by a maidservant. her own children had also partaken of the fruit without suffering any ill effects. ever since the slander spread by father aurelian, however, she had been called ‘a witch’ by the whole neighbourhood, and her children had been called ‘witch-children’ by their comrades in school.
“ultimately the court gave judgment in accordance with the public prosecutor’s demand, finding that father aurelian had uttered the slander, and imposing upon him a fine of fifty marks with costs, or five days’ imprisonment.”
how little power any cultivation of the mind, except that which is purely scientific, has against this degrading superstition!
