Witchcraft

“ 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. ”

“ Professor Burr emphasises the sound and necessary distinction between witchcraft and magic. But he seems to go too far in his insistence on this distinction as vital in the history of witchcraft: “Magic itself is actual and universal. But witchcraft never was. It was but a shadow, a nightmare: the nightmare of a religion, the shadow of a dogma. Less than five centuries saw its birth, its vigor, its decay” (p. 238; p. 38 of reprint) . ”

“ They fully believed in witchcraft, as did all their contemporaries, in a personal Devil who was busily plotting the ruin of their souls, in an everlasting hell of literal fire and brimstone, and in a divine election, by which most of them had been irrevocably doomed from before the creation of the world to eternal perdition, from which nothing which they could do, or were willing to do, could help to rescue them. ”

“ There is no very precise line of demarcation to be drawn between the more pretentious magic and the vulgar details of witchcraft; they find their origin in the same beliefs and fade into each other by imperceptible gradations, and yet, historically speaking, the witchcraft with which we now have to deal is a manifestation of which the commencement cannot be distinctly traced backward much beyond the fifteenth century. ”

“ Witchcraft's reign in many lands and among many peoples is also attested in its remarkable nomenclature. Consider its range in ancient, medieval and modern thought as shown in some of its definitions: Magic, sorcery, soothsaying, necromancy, astrology, wizardry, mysticism, occultism, and conjuring, of the early and middle ages; compacts with Satan, consorting with evil spirits, and familiarity with the Devil, of later times; all at last ripening into an epidemic demonopathy with its countless victims of fanaticism and error, malevolence and terror, of persecution and ruthless sacrifices. ”

“ In order to clear the ground I make a sharp distinction between Operative Witchcraft and Ritual Witchcraft. Under Operative Witchcraft I class all charms and spells, whether used by a professed witch or by a professed Christian, whether intended for good or for evil, for killing or for curing. Such charms and spells are common to every nation and country, and are practised by the priests and people of every religion. They are part of the common heritage of the human race and are therefore of no practical value in the study of any one particular cult. ”

“ Among the believers in witchcraft everything which could not be explained by the knowledge at their disposal was laid to the credit of supernatural powers; and as everything incomprehensible is usually supposed to emanate from evil, the witches were believed to be possessed of devilish arts. As also every non-Christian God was, in the eyes of the Christian, the opponent of the Christian God, the witches were considered to worship the Enemy of Salvation, in other words, the Devil. ”

“ Hence among all the superstitions that have 'stood over' from primeval ages, the belief in witchcraft has been the most deeply rooted and the most tenacious of life. In all times and places until quite lately, among the most advanced communities, the reality of witchcraft has been accepted without question, and scarcely any human belief is supported by so vast a quantity of recorded testimony. ”

“ She said, "There must be witchcraft in it; look out to morrow morning early, and see if anything stirs about in the room; if it does, throw a white cloth at once over it, and then the witchcraft will be stopped." ”

“ The belief in witchcraft is also as lively in the Highlands, as in Devonshire, but, while the law takes no cognisance of it, no great harm is done. The witchcraft mainly relies on ‘sympathetic magic,’ on perforating a clay image of an enemy with needles and so forth. ”

“ They can draw down the moon, destroy unborn children, raise spirits—in a word, there is no department of devilry, major or minor, in which they are not adepts, if we may trust their enthusiastic historian, whose work at once became an authority—almost a ready reckoner of witchcraft, by which anyone with a knowledge of Latin had at his fingers' ends the best possible method of recognising, convicting and destroying any variety or variant whatsoever. ”

“ The divining or necromantic faculties have been generally regarded in the East as honourable properties; whereas in the West they have been degraded into the criminal follies of an infernal compact. The magical art is a noble cultivated science—a prerogative of the priestly caste: witchcraft, in its strict sense, was mostly abandoned to the lowest, and, as a rule, to the oldest and ugliest of the female sex. ”

“ Whence Apuleius saith, 'Thy eyes, sliding down through my eyes into my inmost heart, stirreth up a most vehement burning.' And when eyes are reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves inflamed." Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is still practised to a very great extent among us. ”

“ Under witchcraft it is not the particular custom or superstition which we have to consider—these are considered in their proper places under the several divisions of our subject—but it is the priest-like office of the witch, the influence exercised by this office, the uses to which it is put, the results which flow from it, that are the proper subjects of consideration under the heading of witchcraft. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the same principle we are solemnly assured that three scruples of the ashes of a witch, after she has been well and carefully burnt at the stake, is a sure protection against the evil effects of witchcraft. ”

“ The records of witchcraft contain accounts of priests who were burned at the stake for a union of this sort extending over forty and fifty years, with a spirit assumed to be the Devil in the form of a woman. ”

“ With the savage peoples of the African continent and of the barbarous regions of the globe, witchcraft or sorcery, under the name of Fetishism, flourishes with as much vigour and with as destructive effects as in Europe in the sixteenth century; and every traveller returning from Eastern or Western Africa, or from the South Pacific, testifies to the prevalence of the practice of horrid and bloody rites of a religious observance consisting of charms and incantations. ”

“ The history and phenomena of witchcraft have been so admirably treated by more than one modern investigator, as to render it unnecessary to deal exhaustively with a subject which presents such a vast amount of material for arrangement and comment. ”

“ Witchcraft has to do with the personal "witch," male or female, who professed, or who, in the cases of witch legal trials, is alleged to profess, the possession of certain occult powers for good or evil upon man or animal. It is this personality which constitutes the very essence of witchcraft—there can be no witchcraft in the proper sense of the term unless there be a personal witch to perform or profess the craft. ”

“ The Worship of the Witch
In order clearly to understand and fully to realize the shuddering horror and heart-sick dismay any sort of commerce between human beings and evil spirits, which is the very core and kernel of Witchcraft, excited throughout the whole of Christendom, to appreciate why tome after tome was written upon the subject by the most learned pens of Europe, why holiest pontiffs and wisest judges, grave philosopher and discreet scholar, king and peasant, careless noble and earnest divine, all alike were of one mind in the prosecution of sorcery ”

“ Witchcraft, and the tales told of it, follow in the path of the religion of the age. In the earliest time women were apparently the only physicians-that is to say magicians-and as man was in his lowest stage the magic was a vile witchcraft. ”

“ The belief in the infernal art of witchcraft is perhaps the most horrid, as it certainly is the most absurd, phenomenon in the religious history of the world. Of the millions of victims sacrificed on the altars of religion this particular delusion can claim a considerable proportion. ”

“ Prosecution of Witches.―Down to the beginning of the 13th century many churchmen had spoken against the popular superstition regarding sorcery, witchcraft, and compacts with the devil, and a whole series of provincial councils had pronounced such belief to be heathenish, sinful, and heretical. Even in Gratian’s decretal (§ 99, 5) there was a canon which required the clergy to teach the people that witchcraft was a delusion, and belief in it incompatible with the Christian faith. ”

“ The origin of witchcraft and the vulgar diabolism is to be found in the rude beginnings of the religious or superstitious feeling which, known amongst the present savage nations as Fetishism, probably prevailed almost universally in the earliest ages; while that of the sublimer magic is discovered in the religious systems of the ancient Chaldeans and Persians. Chaldea and Egypt were the first, as far as is known, to cultivate the science of magic: the former people long gave the well-known name to the professional practisers of the art. ”

“ Her powers of witchcraft satisfactorily accounted to the popular mind for her butter and cheese—even if she had no cows—being abundant when the stores of others failed. In dark uncultured times a claim to influence over the unseen powers of nature, and to intercourse with spirits, had only to be made to be allowed, and the mere pretension too readily invests the claimant with awe to make it safe for any one to denounce the imposture. ”

“ Many tales relating to witchcraft, as has been already remarked, must have had their origin in attempts to ridicule people out of their belief and in an unbridled exercise of imagination. They only furnished a proof that men will believe the incredible. ”

“ All these modern forms of civilised superstition are, of course, survivals from a former age. Some of them, as, for instance, that of spilling salt or sitting thirteen at table, can be traced back to religious or other sources. Others, again, have endured from the earliest days of the human race. Many directly emanate from the art of witchcraft. A full-fledged witch must have her regular recipes and prescriptions—the first witch as much as the last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At another time they are elevated far above their natural pitch, full of raptures, and high conceits, and think themselves kings and queens; now if witch stories are in their heads, or witchcraft in their imaginations, why may they not think themselves bewitched, or fancy themselves witches or wizards, as well as kings and queens?’
A witch, in her personal character, was commonly an uncouth old woman, or hag. ”

“ Human nature shrinks from the brutal scenes, produced by the belief in witchcraft. Under the idea, that the devil imprinted upon the body of his miserable vassals a mark, which was insensible to pain, persons were employed to run needles into the bodies of the old women who were suspected of witchcraft. ”

“ At this period the conception of a witch is radically different from that which was prevalent in the era prior to this one. The popular belief of the witchcraft ages, a belief sanctioned by most of the learned men of the time, was that the earth swarmed with millions upon millions of demons. They multiplied by reproduction in the usual way, by the accession of the souls of wicked men, of women dying in childbirth, of children still-born, of men killed in duels. ”

“ A subject mysterious as ours will need for its ready comprehension some general knowledge of the imputed attributes and doings of witchcraft’s special Devil, and of supposed aids and hindrances to his getting access to the visible world; also of demonology and necromancy, of biblical witch and witchcraft, of Protestant Christendom’s witch and witchcraft, of spirit, soul, and mental powers, of miracle, spiritualism, Indian worship, and the like. ”

“ The notion of poisonings, or delusory jugglings, being below what the Scripture intends to set forth as witchcraft, it is evident that witchcraft is a power of doing great things by the aid of the devil; by which our way is open to improve this instance, to demonstrate—30 which was the second thing promised—that Satan’s power must be great. ”

“ The history of Witchcraft, a subject as old as the world and as wide as the world,—since I understand for the present purpose by Witchcraft, Sorcery, Black Magic, Necromancy, secret Divination, Satanism, and every kind of malign occult art,—at once confronts the writer with a most difficult problem. He is called upon to exercise a choice, and his dilemma is by no means made the easier owing to the fact he is acutely conscious that whichever way he may decide he is laying himself open to damaging and not impertinent criticism. ”