Occultation

“ Both the temper and the content, the manner and the matter of the occult, should be borne in mind in a survey of its more distinctive examples. It is well, while observing the particular form of occultism or mysticism, or, it may be, merely of superstition and error, which one or another of the occult movements exhibits, to note as well the importance of the intellectual motive or temperament that inclines to the occult. It is important to inquire not only what is believed, but what is the nature of the evidence that induces belief; to observe what attracts and then makes converts ”

“ The occult, the fantastic, have always held me with supreme, almost unholy, fascination. I have found that by constant practice, an all-excluding, all-consuming concentration bonds stronger than the strongest steel to all dismally horrible tales of the supernatural. ”

“ And of causes that are occult, some are occult temporarily, being hidden at one time, and at another again seen clearly; and some are occult by nature, and capable of becoming at no time visible. And of those who are so by nature, some are capable of being apprehended ”

“ In the sixteenth century, however, Demonology and Angelography were sciences of no common importance; and were, too, a fruitful root whence the occult lore of the sages, and the witch, ghost, and magic craft of the many took their rise, and spread themselves out into a tree, whose branches covered the whole earth with their shadow. ”

“ The Church authorized the belief in evil spirits and provided forms of exorcism to rid the land, the cattle, the house, the body, of the demons that possessed them; while the mediaeval books of medicine show us that that science relied largely upon charms, peculiar times and seasons, and incantations, for the compounding of the drugs that were to effect cures. The witch and her hellish brews maintained a perfect reign of terror over the ignorant and the superstitious. ”

“ When a person is, as they believe, possessed of a devil, and foams and raves under its influence, his friends call an exorcist to cast the devil out. The exorcist, with prayers, signs, and various incantations, drives the spirit from the body of the possessed, leads it (as he affirms) to the tree, and, taking a nail, drives it into the trunk, thus nailing it to its prisonhouse. Should the tree be cut down, the devils, they believe, will escape, and entering the body of the disturber of their peace, do him some painful, if not fatal, injury. ”

“ On these grounds alone I should be inclined to take the legendary evidence for haunting seriously, just as every man who investigates its astonishing history now perceives that witchcraft is not to be dismissed as a mere groundless superstition. ”

“ And the same young man has vociferated a thousand other praises of the said demon, which bear witness to the vehement sorcery practised upon him, and prove, moreover, the abominable, unalterable, and incurable life and the fraudulent witcheries to which he is at present subject, concerning which our lord the archbishop will judge, in order to save by exorcisms and penitences this young soul from the snares of hell, if the devil has not gained too strong a hold of it. ”

“ As has happened in Europe and elsewhere, in the presence of torture and the instant advance of death, the sorcerer and sorceress will not only confess, but even boast of and believe in, their own criminality. ”

“ A clue which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation—especially the Westerns—protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant materialistic disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would, never31theless, be very real in the early centuries of the Christian era, to people fully convinced of the reality of occultism and entering a cycle of degradation which made them ripe for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst description. ”

“ She professed to have certain powers of magic, and when she heard of the young woman's affliction she expressed a wish that she might be allowed to try her hand at casting out the devil. She entered the patient's room; but before she could begin her exorcisms the demon spoke by the mouth of the girl. The crowd that had gathered to witness the casting out of the devil was stricken with horror at the revelations which were poured into their ears. ”

“ Charmers, unconscious, no doubt, of the occult forces which they set to work, attempted to cure neuralgic pains, country bone-setters to mend fractured limbs, while oculists and impostors of the worst kind travelled the country. ”

“ Alongside of these guardian angels there appear evil spirits and demons. "These demons were everywhere: they lurked in every corner, watching for their prey. The city streets knew their malevolent presence, the rivers, the seas, the tops of the mountains. They appeared sometimes as serpents gliding noiselessly upon their victims; as birds, horrid of mien, flying resistlessly to destroy or afflict; as beings in human form, grotesque, malformed, awe-inspiring through their hideousness. ”

“ A glance in which was concentrated the mighty Will developed by mystic knowledge and occult practice. It was the Gaze of the Occult Master, the power of which ordinary men may not withstand. And the mob, feeling its mighty force, experienced the sensation of abject fear and terror. ”

“ The sorcery and witchcraft, prohibited under the Jewish dispensation, [Pg 75] is supposed by high authority to be a very different species of crime from that which was so abhorrent in the days of our ancestors; the former might have come under the description of idolatry, or of the heathen mythology. ‘The ancients believed that there were good and evil demons, which had influence over the minds of men, and that these beings carried on an intercourse between men and gods, conveying the addresses of men to the gods, and divine benefits to men. Hence, demons became the objects of worship. ”

“ Witches and werewolves, alchemists and necromancers, haunted the brains of those strange savage people, barbaric children that they were, and the only thing which was never believed was the truth. Those sons of the old pagan tribes were wrought upon by priest and monk, and they brought all their demons from their mythology and accepted all the demons of the new creed also, turning their old gods into devils. ”

“ We have learned, with concern, that under the pretext of cultivating the occult sciences, you maintain a horrible intercourse with the spirit of darkness and deceit; we therefore exhort you, as a father, to expiate your crime by a repentance proportionable to its enormity. ”

“ These deceptions have, besides, acted as an agreeable and most powerful antidote to superstition, and to that popular belief in miracles, conjuration, sorcery, and witchcraft, which preyed upon the minds of our ancestors; and the effects of shadows, electricity, mirrors, and the magnet, once formidable instruments in the hands of interested persons for keeping the vulgar in awe, have been stripped of their terrors, and are no longer frightful in their most terrific forms. ”

“ But by far the most powerful means of effecting their conviction—surpassing false witness and torture by an infinite length—was the infamous scrutiny to which the miserable creatures were subjected. The search for devil mark and amulet, as prescribed by the Church, was regarded as worse than death itself, and of the thousands who perished, a vast proportion died self-accused, preferring the deadly search of the flame to that of the monkish inquisitors. ”

“ Very numerous are legends of the Devil’s apparition to assist poor architects and mechanics unable to complete their contracts, even carving beautiful church pillars and the like for them, and this sometimes without receiving any recompense. The Devil’s apparition in defence of accused innocence is a well-known feature of European folklore. ”

“ And occultists know that that which is known to them as "Spiritual Power" may be employed for evil as well as good ends (in accordance with the Principle of Polarity) , a fact which has been recognized by the majority of religions in their conceptions of Satan, Beelzebub, the Devil, Lucifer, Fallen Angels, etc. ”

“ Accordingly we are told that the devils appear clad in filthy and tattered garments; that they dwell in deserts, bogs, and miry places—some of them in caves and dens like those of wild beasts; that among the objects by which they are surrounded, are dreary deserts, rocky and barren wastes, thorns and thistles, ferocious beasts and venomous reptiles, dirty pools and heaps of filth. And these things (all of which are spiritual in their nature) are but the embodied forms, under the law of correspondence, of the filthy and infernal loves of the evil spirits themselves. ”

“ They breathed a new and unblest life into beings in whom existence had long been extinct, and by their hateful and resistless power caused the sepulchres to give up their dead.
WITCHCRAFT. Next to sorcery we may recollect the case of witchcraft, which occurs oftener, particularly in modern times, than any other alleged mode of changing by supernatural means the future course of events. The sorcerer, as we shall see hereafter, was frequently a man of learning and intellectual abilities, sometimes of comparative opulence and respectable situation in society. ”

“ The people ask the spirit in the seer why the man is sick. [93] He says, ‘The ghost of the man you killed has come back, and is troubling you.’ Then they say, ‘What is to be done?’ The spirit says, ‘Put him in a place in his or in your land.’ The people say, ‘How can we put him?’ The spirit says, ‘Take a cock, five cocoanuts, rice, and red lead, and fill a bamboo basket with them next Sunday evening, and by waving the basket round the head of the patient, take the ghost out of the patient.’ When Sunday afternoon comes they call the exorcist. ”

“ In this material and matter-of-fact age it is difficult to place belief in anything savouring of the occult—anything which cannot be explained by recognised natural laws, or which is not readily understood. ”

“ He made certain sigils, gestures and movements at the same time. For several minutes he continued to utter these words, until at length the growing volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. ”

“ Houses, built on or near the site of such burial-places, are not infrequently disturbed by strange noises, and the manifestations, when materialised, usually take one or other of these forms. In cases of this kind I have found that exorcism has little or no effect; or, if any, it is that the phenomena become even more emphatic.
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CHAPTER VI
COMPLEX HAUNTINGS AND OCCULT
BESTIALITIES
What are occult bestialities? Are they the spirits of human beings who, when inhabiting material bodies, led thoroughly criminal lives; are they the phantasms of dead beasts—cats and dogs, etc. ”

“ The survey of the modern occult makes it seem quite [46] utopian to look forward to the day when the occult shall have disappeared, and the lion and the lamb shall feed and grow strong on the same nourishment. ”

“ In the chapter treating upon witchcraft and incantation enough testimony has been accumulated to convince the most sceptical that the belief was once widely diffused of the power possessed by sorcerers, et id omne genus, over the unfortunate wretches whose excreta, solid or liquid, fell into their hands; terror may, therefore, have been the impelling motive for scattering, secreting, or preserving in suitable receptacles the alvine dejections of a community. ”

“ Are those bodies which appear only instruments which the angels, demons, or souls make use of to affright, warn, chastise, or instruct the person or persons to whom they appear? This is, in fact, the most rational thing that can be said concerning these apparitions; the exorcisms of the church fall directly on the agent and cause of these apparitions, and not on the phantom which appears, nor on the first author, which is God, who orders and permits it. ”

“ Other superstitions arose and decayed, were dreaded or despised, without greater embarrassment, in the provinces in which they have a temporary currency, than that cowards and children go out more seldom at night, while the reports of ghosts and fairies are peculiarly current. But when the alarm of witchcraft arises, Superstition dips her hand in the blood of the persons accused, and records in the annals of jurisprudence their trials and the causes alleged in vindication of their execution. ”

“ The superstition of the evil eye and of witchcraft goes everywhere with the belief in the power of transformation, which at certain periods of history has been so prevalent as to account for many of the stories of ancient mythology, and will account even for such nursery stories as that of Little Red Riding Hood, as well as for the old-world belief in the werewolf. ”

“ For that matter, tragic incidents and regrettable scandals enough have revealed the sinister and complex underhand methods of that occult force in such a way as to leave no doubt concerning its nature in men's minds. ”

“ One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human mind during these long centuries of darkness and superstition. To them, these things were awful and frightful realities. Hovering above them in the air, in their houses, in the bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the darkness of night, everywhere, around, above and below, were innumerable hosts of unclean and malignant devils. ”

“ This blood which is upon it the devils that are around smell and go for, as is the nature of devils; and these devils whip in after the sisa soul into his host in squads, and the man with such a set inside him is naturally very ill—convulsions, delirium, high temperature, &c., and the indications to your true witch doctor are that that sisa must be extracted before a new dream-soul can be inserted and the man recover. ”