Northcote Whitridge Thomas

“ Witchcraft in Classical Times.—Our knowledge of witchcraft in pagan antiquity is slight, but Horace has left us an elaborate description of the proceedings of two witches in the Esquiline cemetery. At the new moon they steal into it to gather bones and noxious herbs, their feet bare, their hair loose and their robes tucked up. So far from aiming at secrecy, however, they alarm their neighbours with their cries. Making a hollow in the ground they rend a black lamb over it to summon the dead. ”

“ Taboo and Moral Obligation.—In proportion as a taboo becomes a custom and its sanctions fall into the background and are forgotten, its obligations thus transformed are one source of the categorical imperative, the distinguishing feature of which is that it is non-rational and instinctive. We are ignorant of the origin of exogamy and the prohibition of incest, the sanctions of which in Australia and among other peoples of low culture seem to be purely' social, for as a rule irregular marriages seem to be regarded simply as offences against tribal morality ”

“ Medieval Witchcraft.—We know less of early and medieval witchcraft than of modern savage and popular beliefs; our knowledge of it is drawn partly from secular sources—the laws against, and in later times the trials for the offence—partly from ecclesiastical sources; but in each case the popular creed is filtered through the mind of a writer who did not necessarily understand or share the belief. ”

“ The violation of a taboo makes the offender himself taboo; other penalties are not unkown: thus a man who partakes of a forbidden animal will break out in sores or the animal will reproduce itself within him and devour his vitals. Sometimes it is thought that the penalty falls on the kinswomen of the offender and that they produce, instead of children, animals of the taboo species. In Melanesia burial-grounds are taboo, and if the shadow of a passer-by falls on one, this entails upon him the loss of his soul ”

“ Psychology of Witchcraft.—Although at the height of the witch persecution torture wrung from innocent victims valueless confessions which are at best evidence that long-continued agony of body may be instrumental in provoking hallucinations, there can be no doubt that witches commonly, like the magician in lower planes of culture, firmly believe in their own powers, and the causes of this seem to be not merely subjective. ”

“ The property of the dead man is commonly burnt or deposited with him in the grave, in part as a protective measure, in part under the influence of belief in the continuity of this and the future life, and the need of supplying him with necessaries. Burial grounds are avoided, animals or plants from the neighbourhood are not used as food. Finally the name of the dead is not used, partly for fear of summoning him by the power of the word, but partly also from a conviction that, like the name of a king or chief, it is too holy or too dangerous for common use. ”

“ The burial-place is often taboo for the common people, save when they are actually engaged in funeral rites; but the sorcerer, thanks to his indwelling power, can resist the deadly influences which would destroy the common folk, and may enter a cemetery for ritual or other purposes. So too indirect taboos depend for their strength on the mana of him who imposes them; if it is a chief or a priest, they are more powerful than those imposed by a common person. The mana of the priest, or chief, does not depend on his position ”

“ Lycanthropy is often confused with transmigration; but the essential feature of the wer-animal is that it is the alternative form or the double of a living human being, while the soul-animal is the vehicle, temporary or permanent, of the spirit of a dead human being. The vampire is sometimes regarded as an example of lycanthropy; but it is in human form, sometimes only a head, sometimes a whole body, sometimes that of a living person, at others of a dead man who issues nightly from the grave to prey upon the living. ”

“ The importance of this in the evolution of law and order is manifest; for whereas a chief would not intervene to protect the property of an individual simply to punish what we regard as a transgression, he is bound to do so when a taboo is broken. ”

“ A further link is supplied by the Zulu belief that the magician’s familiar is really a transformed human being; when he finds a dead body on which he can work his spells without fear of discovery, the wizard breathes a sort of life into it, which enables it to move and speak, it being thought that some dead wizard has taken possession of it. He then burns a hole in the head and through the aperture extracts the tongue. Further spells have the effect of changing the revivified body into the form of some animal, hyena, owl or wild cat, the latter being most in favour. ”

“ It is a common error to suppose that the whole of African religion is embraced in the practices connected with these tutelary deities; so far from this being the case, belief in higher gods, not necessarily accompanied with worship or propitiation, is common in many parts of Africa, and there is no reason to suppose that it had been derived in every case, perhaps not in any case, from Christian or Mahommedan missionaries. ”

“ Demoniacal possession is familiar to us from the New Testament narratives; there seems to be no reason to suppose that the cases there recorded were due to anything but disease; but the view is still occasionally maintained by Christian apologists that real demon possession existed in Judaea. Demoniacs in the New Testament are stated to live among the tombs, to be deaf and dumb, or blind, to be possessed by a multitude of evil spirits or to suffer from high fever as a result of possession; the demons are said to pass into the bodies of animals or to reside in waterless places. ”

“ Persons or things which are regarded as taboo may be compared to objects charged with electricity; they are the seat of a tremendous power which is transmissible by contact, and may be liberated with destructive effect if the organisms which provoke its discharge are too weak to resist it; the result of a violation of a taboo depends partly on the strength of the magical influence inherent in the taboo object or person, partly on the strength of the opposing mana of the violator of the taboo. ”

“ Royal and Priestly Taboos.—Among people of low culture the chief, and in higher cultures the king, is sometimes held responsible for the order of nature, the increase of the crops, and the welfare of his people generally; it is therefore of the highest importance that nothing should diminish or perturb his influence, and, as a logical consequence, the life of the king, and to a less degree of the chief, is surrounded with a complicated system of taboos and ritual prohibitions. ”

“ At a later stage and as a result of the greater Weight attached to morality, the positive uncleanness falls into the background, leaving only the negatively unclean, the unholy, which is not in itself death-dealing, but may, like its savage analogue, call down on the community, innocent and guilty alike, the wrath of higher powers, the remedy being, not so much the punishment of the offender, still less mere physical purification, but their moralized analogues, prayer, fasting and repentance. ”

“ From the 7th century onwards women and priests figure largely in the accusations of witchcraft, the latter because their office made the canonical offence more serious, the former because love potions, and especially impotentia ex maleficio, are the weapons of the female sex. With the rise and development of the belief in the heretics’ Sabbath, which first appears early in the 11th century, another sexual element—the concubitus daemonum—began to play its part, and soon the predominance of woman in magic was assured. ”

“ The Malays believe that the office of pawang (priest) is only hereditary if the soul of the dead priest, in the form of a tiger, passes into the body of his son. While the familiar is often regarded as the alternative form of the magician, the nagual or bush-soul is commonly regarded as wholly distinct from the human being. Transitional beliefs, however, are found, especially in Africa, in which the power of transformation is attributed to the whole of the population of certain areas. ”

“ Thus, kings and chiefs are possessed of great power, and it is death for their subjects to address them directly; but a minister or other person of greater mana than common can approach them unharmed, and can in turn be approached by their inferiors without risk. ”

“ Definition.—The term fetish is commonly understood to mean the worship of or respect for material, inanimate objects, conceived as magically active from a virtue inherent in them, temporarily or permanently, which does not arise from the fact that a god or spirit is believed to reside in them or communicate virtue to them. ”

“ In northern countries the witches’ Sabbath never seems to assume any importance; in Germany, in the form of the Brocken assembly on May Eve, it is a prominent feature, and in England we may bring it into relation with the belief that at certain periods of the year demons and spirits are abroad and have special powers; in south Europe the idea of the Sabbath seems to owe much of its prominence to the association of witchcraft with heresy and the assemblies of the Waldenses and others. ”

“ POSSESSION, the term given to the supposed control of a human body and mind by an alien spirit, human or non-human; or the occupation by an alien spirit of some portion of a human body, causing sickness, pain, &c. ”