Witch of Endor

“ Ministers who admit that witchcraft is a superstition will read the story of the Witch of Endor—will read it in a solemn, reverential voice—with a theological voice—and will have the impudence to say that they believe it.
It would be delightful to know that angels hover in the air; that they guard the innocent, protect the good; that they bend over the cradles and give health and happy dreams to pallid babes; that they fill dungeons with the light of their presence and give hope to the imprisoned ”

“ That is, the Whisperings that proceeds from this Familiar Spirit, that is begotten by the Imagination of Reason the Father, and the Seed of Reason the Mother, as I said before, is that motional Voice all Witches and Wizards have, whereby they peep and mutter in themselves, as if they did hear Voices and see Shapes, and living Spirits arise out of the Ground, as the Witch of Endor said to King Saul, She saw Gods ascend out of the earth. When as there was no Spirit nor Shape came out of the Ground, at all ”

“ And to say the truth, hell were no ill winter quarter, if it were not so overstocked with that sort of cattle. Since the death of the Witch of Endor, it has been all their business to improve themselves in subtlety and malice, and to set us together by the ears among ourselves. ”

“ Both parties believed with equal firmness in a personal Devil, and both supported their arguments with quotations from the Bible. But as the believers were able to bring forward more texts than the unbelievers and had in their hands an unanswerable argument in the Witch of Endor, the unbelievers, who dared not contradict the Word of God, were forced to fall back on the theory that the witches suffered from hallucination, hysteria, and, to use the modern word, 'auto-suggestion'. ”

“ The Puritans had conned well the story of the Witch of Endor, and, with their tendency to reproduce the Old Testament spirit, felt that the existence of witches was an abomination in the sight of the Lord, which would bring divine wrath upon the community that sheltered them unless the sin were purged from it by their death. ”

“ There was a time, and that not very far distant, in which the foolish story of the witch of Endor was received with the greatest respect; at this moment, enlightened Christians themselves are ashamed of it. In proportion as man makes progress in physical knowledge, he ceases to be the dupe of superstition, and what before appeared marvellous, now becomes plain and intelligible. ”

“ We know but too well, that necromancers and magicians themselves, have not only seen the shapes and forms of things, but likewise have allowed others to see the same, who had no skill of their art. A precedent for which, is the Witch of Endor. ”

“ Neither in sacred nor profane ancient history do we find what was understood in the days of our ancestors by witchcraft, which meant a formal and actual compact with the great Prince of evil beings. The sorcery of antiquity [i.333] consisted in pretending to possess certain mysterious charms, and to do by their means, or by the co-operation of superhuman spirits, without any reference to their character as evil or good beings, what transcends the action of mere natural powers.
The witch of Endor, for instance, was a conjurer and necromancer, rather than a witch. ”

“ Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence with supernatural power, constituted a second Witch of Endor, and able by "examining the ball of Josephine's left thumb with great attention," to discover the minute particulars of her future life, we must discredit the absurdity. ”

“ For your real witch, whether she be Diana or Mother Demdyke, Joan of Arc, or the Witch of Endor, has always—like less gifted human beings—conformed to one of several types, varying from them only in the degree proper to human nature. Whether young [Pg 300] and beautiful, or old and repulsive, whether hag or heroine, goddess or gude-wife, she remains constant to her type, and has done so from the beginning of things. The witch of fiction, on the other hand, like the problematic heroine, doth as her creator wishes in defiance of all laws of possibility. ”

“ I have seen this little miracle performed, and confess I do not understand it; and yet I exceedingly doubt, if an egg can be so instantly converted into a pancake.
The witch of Endor pretended to conjure up the dead. The effigy was supposed to be made manifest to the eye. Our modern witches and wizards conjure, up or down, whichever it may be, invisible spirits. These spirits have no power of audible speech; thus far, at least, they seem not to have recovered the use of their tongues. To be sure, spirit without matter cannot be supposed to emit sounds ”

“ For when a Man is deceived in his Expectations and Faith which he had in that Art, he may very well be said to be bewitched: But as for raising Spirits without Bodies, there is no Witch, no Conjurer, or Magician, nor the greatest Artist in the World can do; neither can any Spirit assume any Body but its own. So much for natural Witches. ”

“ The evocation of the dead was one of the sublimest mysteries of magic. Sometimes there was made to pass before the eyes of the inquiring devotee a large, black figure, moved by secret springs in dimness and obscurity. Sometimes the performers, whether sorcerers or witches, limited themselves to declaring that they saw the shade which was desired to be evoked, and their word was sufficient; this was called necromancy. The famous witch of Endor has always been a subject of great dispute among the fathers of the Church. ”

“ I don't know how they get over the Witch of Endor, or the various other allusions to witches in the Bible, but I suppose they do somehow or other.
People are much too clever for me, nowadays, and get over any difficulty that comes in their way—or fancy that they do so, and trouble themselves no more about it. I have even heard people disbelieve in fairies, but that of course is sheer nonsense; and no one who wanders—as I have often done, at all seasons and at all hours—through the glorious English woodlands, can doubt the existence of the dear little elves. ”

“ Many a man has spent more time in trying to find out [Pg 228] about the Witch of Endor as an excuse for his consulting some vulgar fortune-teller of modern time than he has spent in trying to learn the will and secure the guidance of the good and wise God. ”

“ That relating to the Witch of Endor is one of the most successful we ever read. We cannot enter into particulars in this brief notice, but we would strongly recommend the pamphlet even to those who care nothing about Mesmerism, or angry (for it has come to this at last) with the subject."—Dublin Evening Post. ”

“ Like him, Webster doubted the truth of the witch of Endor’s enchantments, which the upholders of the faith rested on as the very keystone of their position. The witch herself he calls “a cozening quean,” “a crafty subtile quean,” “an idolatrous, wicked, and couzening witch:” for they understood the value of forcible language in those days: Saul is “a drowned puppet”—to Glanvil’s intense wrath at this rude mishandling of a “noble prince;” ”

“ It has at all times been a received opinion of the wise that witchcraft is a thing truly practised—by which such women as the Witch of Endor in Holy Writ were able to call dead men out of their deep graves grown with grass ”

“ For in Webster’s sense he did not make ידעני jidegnoni neither, that is wizzards, and yet Manasses is said to make them both alike. יעשה אוב וידעני, Et fecit pythonem et magos. So plain is it that אוב, obh, signifies pytho, and that adequately in the same sense that pytho does, either a familiar spirit, or him that has that spirit of divination. But in בעלת אוב, bagnalath obh, it necessarily signifies the familiar spirit itself, which assisted the witch of Endor; whereby it is manifest she is rightly called a witch. ”

“ For I declare and perfectly know, that there is no such Thing as Spirits to walk without Bodies, nor assume any Shape after Death, nor be raised out of the Ground by any Witch or any Familiar Spirit whatsoever; it is all produced out of the dark Imagination of the Heart, where Ignorance beareth Rule, for there is no such Thing can be presented but to the Ignorant and dark minded People. ”

“ With the Restoration the general laxity went so far as to scoff at witchcraft, to deny its existence, and even, in the works of Wagstaff and Webster, to minimise the leading case of the Witch of Endor. Against the ‘drollery of Sadducism,’ the Psychical Researchers within the English Church, like Glanvill and Henry More, or beyond its pale, like Richard Baxter and many Scotch divines, defended witchcraft and apparitions as outworks of faith in general. ”

“ But in the development there is no uniform level of emotion, rather the emotion varies from gentle or pathetic to intense or tragic. It is indeed in its profounder imaginative vision, its more varying and rising degrees of emotional intensity, and its more logical structural development to a climax that The Witch of Endor has more incisive and compelling power as poetic drama than Campbell’s Arthurian drama Mordred. ”

“ The Witch of Endor is called Oub or Ob, translated Pythonissa; and Oubois was the name of the basilisk or royal serpent, emblem of the Sun and an ancient oracular deity of Africa.”
A paragraph followed which was doubly underlined, and pursuing my reading I made a discovery which literally caused me to hold my breath. ”

“ So that there is no other Devil, or Spirit, or Familiar Spirit for Witches to deal withal, or to work any Enchantments by, but their own Imagination; there the Familiar Spirit is produced from whence it came, and there it ceases to be when they are put to Death, or over-power'd by the Knowledge, and the Power of Faith in other Men, then the Familiar Spirit centers in the Imagination again, it being over-powered by the Power of Faith ”

“ To the Matter in hand, the Witches they do not know any Divine Being, or Power, or Form of God, but what their Imagination doth conceive to be God, for they have full Faith in this Knowledge of theirs, to be the true Knowledge of God; only the Laws of Men they fear, but no other God, but that Familiar Spirit which they have produced in themselves, by giving themselves either to Fasting and Prayer, unto an unknown Divine Being or Power; supposing this Power to be a Spirit that can appear in any Shape they shall call for or desire. ”

“ Again, These Witches doth suppose the true God to be an Infinite Spirit, without any Body or Substance, as all People almost do; and that the Devil is a Spirit that can assume Bodies or what Shape he pleaseth, or what Shape or Form the Witch shall call for. This is the Opinion of most People in the World as well as Witches, yea, even of the most of the greatest learned Men; Darkness hath overspread the Minds of all learned Men in the World, so that they cannot find out what the true God is, nor where he is ”

“ How She and all other Witches do beget or produce that Familiar Spirit they deal with, and what a Familiar Spirit is, and how those Voices are procured, and Shapes appear unto them, whereby the Ignorant and Unbelieving People are deceived by them.
2. It is clearly made appear in this TREATISE, that no Spirit can be raised without its Body, neither can any Spirit assume any Body after Death; For if the Spirit doth walk, the Body must walk also. ”

“ Put on the head of the churn staff.
And should the witch Hendry (of Endor) come.
The boy would conquer her.’
“You see the witch Hendry was in the Bible. She was the strongest witch that ever lived, but if any person would get all these things and use them, she, or any other witch, could not do him injury. I have myself seen the red thread on children to keep evil from them.”)
The above is undoubtedly sheer witchcraft, white witchcraft, if you like. It is not then surprising that the evidence is not in favour of these eolas professors being held in much social esteem. ”

“ Therefore I would advise you to read the Books of ours called the Divine-Looking-Glass, for that you may see there, that there can be no Spirits without a Body, neither can any Witch or Conjurer raise any Spirit without a Body: But these Conjurers may do through the Ignorance and Darkness of Man's Reason, and that Fear and Belief that is in the Ignorant, they may by their ignorant Power raise a Shadow of things, as if they were real Bodies, or Spirits in the Shape of Bodies ”

“ Now as for those ignorant Women which are Witches, their Witchcraft lies in their wicked Nature, by giving themselves up to believe, that there is no God at all but Nature only, and so by that strong Faith that they have in Nature, they have Power over those whose Understandings are of a lower Capacity than themselves, and so People being ignorant and fearful of them, doth many times disturb and search their Blood with Extremity of Fear, which they have of one that is suspected for a Witch, and so by their own Fear and Imagination, they come to be bewitched. ”

“ Broke my vows; wed; fell to what thou seest me: a priestess of high degree acting—acting the part of a hag. I was doomed to death. The people think me dead, but I live, deserted by the one who caused my fall. I live, thirsting for revenge—I, Endora the witch, eking a crust of bread by fortune-telling and love philtres, bearing the load of Hecate's curse. I they call Endora am no other than Myrtile of Delos! Now, noble Saronia, thou knowest how love is dead, and I the accursed. ”

“ Elise was obliged to pass close by them, and the witches fixed their wicked eyes upon her; but she repeated her prayer, gathered the stinging-nettles, and took them back with her into the palace. One person only had seen her; it was the Archbishop, he was awake when others slept; now he was convinced that all was not right about the Queen: she must be a witch, who had through her enchantments infatuated the King, and all the people. ”