Magus

“ Another print—a companion to the foregoing—represents the still more complete discomfiture of the magus. The saint here occupies the right-hand side of the picture, and is raising his hand higher, with apparently a greater show of authority. The demons have all turned against their master the magician, whom they are beating and hurling headlong from his chair. They seem to be proclaiming their joy at his fall by all sorts of playful attitudes. ”

“ The chant of the magus grows shriller and shriller, till it thins into a final continuous shriek. And there mingles with it thunder, and the re-echoed echo of shriek and thunder, to the splitting of ear and brain. And the earth rocks until there remains no longer floor nor roof, but sometimes one was uppermost and sometimes the other, and only the rapidity of the motion makes it possible to keep place in the circle. Thus, alternately, the venturous pair stood erect or head downwards. In this part of the ordeal, however, the sailor's professional habit stands his friend in need ”

“ The grand mission of the magus or sorcerer in all the occult lore of all antiquity, whether he appear as Buddha or any other man of men, is to conquer all enemies by tremendous power won by penance or by iron will. A favourite means of tormenting the enemy or fiend is to awaken the conscience of the magician, or, what is the same thing, to tempt him to sin, as Satan did Christ. ”

“ The gangs have done their grudging work, and a palace hangs between wind and water seductive and serene where nothing hung before. The last odours are burning. The weird wailing of the magus is slackening into the majestic formulæ of dismissal. Without this termination to the ritual the magicians on leaving their sanctuary would have been torn limb from limb by the awaiting fiends. ”

“ After pompous orations and loud acclaims, Simon Magus leapt from the scaffolding—and fell, a mangled heap, at the feet of Nero, whose face and garments were sprinkled with his blood. He lingered for two or three days and then expired miserably. The superstitious Emperor believed that magic had been pitted against magic to compass his own humiliation and his favourite’s downfall. Who was the offender? Then some courtier pointed out the grey-haired man with the tear furrows in his cheeks, now returning thanks to God, and from that time the doom of the Apostle was sealed. ”

“ Magic seems to have always borne the same character in every country. The marvels accomplished by the Indian mystic charms, or Dhárani, are exactly those which the Mediæval magicians of Europe professed to achieve. To make water flow backwards, to resuscitate the dead, to fly through the air, to read a man’s inmost thoughts, these were the wonders done by Simon Magus in his day, and by Albertus Magnus and his followers in their day ”

“ But the magic of which I speak is of a far more subtle and deeply refined nature, and those who possess it are alone in life, save when by some rare chance they meet their kind. Those who are deeply and mysteriously interested in any pursuit for which the great multitude of all-alike people have no sympathy, who have peculiar studies and subjects of thought, partake a little of the nature of the magus. Magic, as popularly understood, has no existence, it is a literal myth—for it means nothing but what amazes or amuses for a short time. ”

“ He surmounts the accusation of being without morals by utterly denying their existence from a higher or illuminated point of view. The magus claims to rank with the gods, and if a divinity creates mankind as his children, and then has a child by a woman, he is in the same state as the sorcerer, according to wizards. ”

“ It may therefore be concluded that as soon as man began to think and speak and fear the mysterious, he also began to appease ghosts and bugbears by sacrifices. Then there sprung up at once--quite as early--the magus, or the cleverer man, who had the wit to do the sacrificing and eat the meats sacrificed, and explain that he had arranged it all privately with the dead and the devils. ”

“ And if such beings exist without the universe being destroyed a thousand times over, must we not admit that they are under obedience to a supreme will, a wise and omnipotent force, which forbids them to annihilate worlds, even as it forbids us to destroy the swallow’s nest and the [Pg 513] chrysalis of the butterfly? For the Magus who is conscious of this power in the deep places of his nature and who discerns in universal law the instruments of eternal justice, the Seal of Solomon, his Keys and his Ring are tokens of supreme royalty. ”

“ Fools and sots aim at happiness, but men aim only at power. The magus, the sorcerer, the alchemist, are seized with fascination of the unknown; and they desire a greatness that is inaccessible to mankind. They think by the science they study so patiently, but endurance and strength, by force of will and by imagination, for these are the great weapons of the magician, they may achieve at last a power with which they can face the God of Heaven Himself.”
Oliver Haddo lifted his huge bulk from the low chair in which he had been sitting. He began to walk up and down the studio. ”

“ It is not necessary to suppose that the Medes ever apostatized altogether from the worship of Ormazd, or formally surrendered their Dualistic faith. But, practically, the Magian doctrines and the Magian usages—elemental worship, divination with the sacred rods, dream expounding, incantations at the fire-altars, sacrifices whereat a Magus officiated—seem to have prevailed; the new predominated over the old; backed by the power of an organized hierarchy, Magism over-laid the primitive Arian creed, and, as time went on, tended more and more to become the real religion of the nation. ”

“ Certain interpreters have concluded that the magus whose advent was announced in the course of the nineteenth century would be named Maphon and would be the son of Eliphisma, but this reading may be somewhat speculative.
There is nothing more dangerous than mysticism, for the mania which it begets baffles every combination of human wisdom. It is ever the fools who upset the world and that which great statesmen never foresee is the desperate work of a maniac. The architect of the temple of Diana at Ephesus promised himself eternal glory, but he counted without Erostratus. ”

“ When sufficiently condensed to be visible, they are as a vapour tinged by the reflection of an image; they have no personal life, but they mimic that of the magus who evokes them, as the shadow images the body. They collect above all about idiots and those immoral creatures [Pg 112] whose isolation abandons them to irregular habits. The cohesion of parts being very slight in their fantastic bodies, they fear the open air, a great fire and above all the point of a sword. ”

“ Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw. ”

“ But by no means always in early Christian writings: thus Clement of Alexandria (c150-c220) in the Stromata, II, 1, asserts that the Greeks eulogize “astrology and mathematics and magic and sorcery” as the highest sciences.
[1813] In contrast to Lucian’s Menippus or Necromancy, in which the Cynic philosopher Menippus resorts to a Magus at Babylon in order to gain entrance to the lower world and question Teiresias. ”

“ He repeats Hugh of St. Victor’s definition that the magic art is not received in philosophy, destroys religion, and corrupts morals. As he has said before, the magus is a trickster and evil-doer as well as wise in the secrets of nature and in prediction of the future. [1011] Michael lists twenty-eight varieties or methods of divination. He believes that they are all true: augury by song of birds, interpretation of dreams, observance of days, or divination by holocausts of blood and corpses. But they are forbidden as infamous and evil. ”

“ The very words "magic" and "magician" are probably an inheritance of that remotest of antiquities. One of the words for "priest" in the old Turanian tongue of Shumir was imga, which, in the later Semitic language, became mag. The Rab-mag—"great priest," or perhaps "chief conjurer," was a high functionary at the court of the Assyrian kings. Hence "magus," "magic," "magician," in all the European languages, from Latin downward. ”

“ It is not a Magus who cleanses the defiled by ablution ceremonials, heals the sick by the recital of the holy spells, and moves about with a penom over his mouth, and a khrafstraghna in his hand; but it is an athravan who exercises all these powers and more. ”

“ And whatever they might practise of real magic, the notion of mankind concerning them, receiv’d strength from the name magi, which they might bring with them from the east. Magus there originally signifies no more than a priest, or person who officiates in sacreds. The word comes from maaghim meditabundi, people of a contemplative, retir’d life; whom more commonly in the west, they call’d Druids. I am not dubious in thinking the times we are talking of, when this temple of Abury was built, are of the extremest antiquity, near that of Abraham. ”

“ Gog, in fact, stands to Oannes or Yan in the same relation as Jack stands to John: the one is seemingly a synonym for the other.
Figs. 46 and 47.—From Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (Baring-Gould) .
The word magic implies a connection with Maga or Magog: in Greek mega means great, and the combined idea of great and wise is extended into magus, magister, and magician. The Latin magnus and magna are respectively Mag Unus and Mag Una: Mogounus was one of the titles applied to St. Patrick, and it was also a sobriquet of the Celtic Sun God. ”

“ Like Isidore Albert adopts the incorrect etymology of connecting Magus and magnus. But for him the Magi are not so called on account of the magnitude of their sins. “Etymologically the Magi are great men” whose knowledge of, or conjecture from, the inevitable processes of cause and effect in nature often enables them to predict or produce marvels of nature. In his commentary on the Book of Daniel Albert quotes Jerome’s similar description of them as “masters who philosophize about the universe; moreover, the Magi are more particularly called astronomers who search the future in the stars.” ”

“ The Magi Were priests, and they called religion in general Magia. They, and their rites, grew into disrepute; in consequence of which they were by the Greeks called απατεωνες, φαρμακευται: jugglers, and conjurers. But the Persians of old esteemed them very highly. [985] Μαγον, τον θεοσεβη, και θεολογον, και ἱερεα, ὁι Περσαι ὁυτως λεγουσιν. By a Magus, the Persians understand a sacred person, a professor of theology, and a Priest. Παρα Περσαις [986] Μαγοι ὁι φιλοσοφοι, και θεοφιλοι. Among the Persians, the Magi are persons addicted to philosophy, and to the worship of the Deity. ”

“ Magicians, sorcerers, miracle-workers, impostors, buffoons and courtesans were in high favor with all classes. Life and death were equally disregarded. Races, games, fêtes, debauches, combats, processions, seemed to occupy the whole time of the excitable and licentious populace.
Simon Magus, after spending three or four months in Egypt with Helena, came to Antioch and began an extraordinary course of public teachings. It was a rich [pg 306] field for his peculiar genius. He combined philosophy with sorcery, theology with magic. ”

“ Simon Magus was a magician in the sense in which the ancients used that term; but he possessed evidently, in addition, all the powers claimed by better spiritualists, like Home in our day. A native of Gitton, a small [Pg 85] village of Samaria, he had early manifested superior intellectual gifts, accompanied by an almost marvelous control over the minds of others. By the aid of the former he produced a lofty gnostic system, which crumbled, however, to pieces as soon as it came into contact with the inspired system of Christianity. ”

“ The spirits only pretended to be coerced in order to encourage such idolatrous practices. “Whoever wishes to operate by such experiments” (mark the word!) , “deserts the Lord God.” As for the Jews, they get along only so-so, and “do in no wise work to obtain the vision of the deity.” Only a Christian, therefore, can operate successfully in such visions. “And although three kinds of men work at this art of magic, one should not think that there is any evil included in this name of magus, for a magus per se is called a philosopher in Greek, a scribe in Hebrew, and a sage in Latin.” ”

“ Magus the sonne of Samothes, after the death of his father, was the second king of Celtica, by whome (as Berosus writeth) there were manie townes builded among the Celts, which by the witnesse of Annius did beare the addition of their founder Magus: of which townes diuers are to be found in Ptolomie. And Antoninus a painfull surueior of the world and searcher of cities, maketh mention of foure of them here in Britaine, Sitomagus, Neomagus, Niomagus, and Nouiomagus. ”

“ With reference to their form and number, it should scarcely be necessary to enumerate them, for they must be almost commonly familiar, but as it is precarious to assume anything, and as there are also other reasons, I will tabulate them briefly as follows:—
Trumps Major: Otherwise, Greater Arcana (Class I) 1. The Magus, Magician, or juggler, the caster of the dice and mountebank, in the world of vulgar trickery. ”

“ And so all was, and is, in sorcery a kind of wild poetry based on symbols, all blending into one another, light and darkness, fire-flies and grain, life and death.
Very strange indeed, but very strictly according to ancient magic as described by classic authorities, is the threatening Diana, in case she will not grant a prayer. This recurs continually in the witch-exorcisms or spells. The magus, or witch, worships the spirit, but claims to have the right, drawn from a higher power, to compel even the Queen of Earth, Heaven, and Hell to grant the request. ”