Witchfinder

“ Every town and county had its witch-finder, whose duty it was to detect and bring to trial all those tainted with witchcraft or sorcery. Considering that almost every accident which happened was attributed to sorcery, the duties of the witch-finder were most important. According to his diligence so was the safety of persons and property. Hail-storms, destructive floods, dangerous fires, disease among cattle, and domestic afflictions were all ascribed to witchcraft. A mole or wart discovered on any part of an old woman's body was thought to be a witch-mark. ”

“ In fact, they cannot even compel the devil or his imps to obey--they work entirely by his good-will as slaves. But in the old Italian lore the sorcerer or witch is all or nothing, and aims at limitless will or power.
Of the ancient belief in the virtues of a perforated stone I need not speak. But it is to be remarked that in the invocation the witch goes forth in the earliest morning to seek for verbena or vervain. The ancient Persian magi, or rather their daughters, worshipped the sun as it rose by waving freshly plucked verbena [2] , which was one of the seven most powerful plants in magic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A description of a witch in the first half of the seventeenth century says: "The devil's otter-hound, living both on land and sea, and doing mischief in either; she kills more beasts than a licensed butcher in Lent, yet is ne'er the fatter; she's but a dry nurse in the flesh, yet gives such to the spirit. A witch rides many times post on hellish business, yet if a ladder do but stop her, she will be hanged ere she goes any further." ”

“ The Devil’s Mark to which allusion is here made, or the Witches’ Mark, as it is sometimes called, was regarded as perhaps the most important point in the identification of a witch, it was the very sign and seal of Satan upon the actual flesh of his servant, and any person who bore such a mark was considered to have been convicted and proven beyond all manner of doubt of being in league with and devoted to the service of the fiend. ”

“ A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank
And weaves her net for thee.
"She weaves her golden hair; she sings
Her spell-song low and faint;
The wickedest witch in Salem jail
Is to that girl a saint."
"Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue;
God knows," the young man cried,
"He never made a whiter soul
Than hers by Wenham side.
"She tends her mother sick and blind,
And every want supplies;
To her above the blessed Book
She lends her soft blue eyes.
"Her voice is glad with holy songs,
Her lips are sweet with prayer;
Go where you will, in ten miles round
Is none more good and fair." ”

“ Her powers are varied, and by no means always common to every individual. Or, again, she has the power to turn herself corporeally into a wolf or a cat—which brings her into line with the were-wolf, just as the cat or wolf may under certain circumstances transform themselves, permanently or otherwise, into a human witch. She may acquire the mind of a wolf without its body; on the other hand, many a beautiful princess has been transformed into a white doe by witchcraft. So with her male colleagues—sorcerer, magician, wizard, warlock, male-witch, diviner, and the rest of the great family. ”

“ As the divining familiar it represented the Devil himself, and the 'responses' received to questions were believed to come from him. As the essential point of this class of familiar was that it should be a species of animals and not one special animal, the devil merely appointed to the witch what species she should observe in divining. The domestic familiar, being a small animal, could be actually given into the hands of the witch, with instructions for its feeding and for the method of using it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the early age of witchcraft, the witch, like the magician, summoned spirits from the vasty deep, discovered the hiding-places of concealed treasures, struck down men or beasts by her spells, or covered the heavens with clouds and let loose the winds of destruction and desolation. ”

“ They are her people. Mine, mine, mine. And she thinks of her father and mother who burned for their witchcraft in France...
Two hundred witches had burned that day. The ashes had fallen upon the clean decks of the English boat at harbor there, and Captain Bale, a kind man, finding this witch's cub hungry and sobbing about the locked door of a cottage, picked her up and carried her back to his wife who believed the little thing to be the child of the Devil. And so the little creature came secretly to think herself. ”

“ When the witch returned home, she said, "I smell royal blood." "No, mother," said the girl, "it is a poor man who asks alms, and who would be glad to have shelter given him, as he has no place to go to." "Well, then, let him remain," replied the witch; "but he must present me to-morrow with a potful of guano of little birds." The prince, distressed to tears, asked the girl to tell him how he could possibly procure the guano. The girl, who knew something of witchcraft, replied, "Do not distress yourself about that, for I will show you how you are to do that." ”

“ Given the supernatural, and sorcery must follow in some shape or other as its corollary. Whence also the witch is as ubiquitous as she is enduring. Under some form or other she exists, and has existed, in every quarter of the globe; she is as familiar to the English peasant as to the West African, in South America as in Japan. Her attributes vary, and have varied, with the racial temperament and the religious conceptions of her worshippers and persecutors, as widely as do, and have done, their gods. ”

“ While witchcraft was a power in the land, the witch, or warlock, was popularly supposed to be the direct instrument, and, indeed, the bond-slave, of the Evil One, fulfilling his behests in virtue of a compact, written in letters of blood, by which the witch made over her soul to the Infernal Power in return for the enjoyment of supernatural prerogatives for a fixed period. This treaty having been concluded, the witch received a mark on some part of the body, which was thenceforward insensible of pain—the stigma or devil’s mark, by which he might know his own again. ”

“ OF THE WITCH’S POWERS OF TRANSFORMATION.
Those of our readers who are not very well acquainted with the theory of witchcraft will not be a little surprised, at the unaccountable activity of its agents, who are capable of paying not only proper attention to their own private affairs, but likewise of carrying on almost all the business of the Evil One in this land. In order to obviate all surprise on this head, be it remembered, that they are endowed with as ample powers of transmigration (at their institution into the craft) as any other of Satan’s spiritual agents ”

“ Then she would be a friend to him; did he forget her power? He questioned her on the uses she would make of a blood-stained linen rag. She told him she had her purposes, and he remembered her witch practices, the stories of the ghastly ingredients of her magic potions. He alluded to witchcraft, and she defied him again, then he called the guard; but when the soldiers' tread echoed in the corridor, she drew [318] the cloth from a hidden panel in her bureau and flung it at him, with bitter words cursing him. And he departed trembling, the fear of the Grävenitz upon him. ”

“ The Magician, whatsoever his own private failings, has certainly deserved well of posterity. Just as the quack and the Bond Street sybil are representatives of the witch in the direct line, so, from the alchemist and the sorcerer are descended the great scientists of our own day—an impious brood indeed, who deny that their own father was aught but an impostor and a charlatan. ”

“ The method was probably such as obtained in other places where auguries by animals and birds were practised, i.e. by the direction and pace of the animal, by its actions, by its voice if it emitted any sound, and so on. The method of making such observations and of translating them when made was part of the instruction given to the witch by the Devil; and was usually employed to discover whether a person were bewitched, the ultimate result of an illness, and the length of life of any given person. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In all the villages round about an old beggar woman was much dreaded as a witch, and this woman came very often to the farm begging. The good people of the farm used to give her directly all she desired, just to rid themselves of her importunities. But one day the farm-labourers made up their minds to discover whether the old hag was really a witch or not, and after she had entered the room, they set a broom on end before the door. It was on a Saturday evening. When a broom is put upside down before a door—such is the superstition of the people—the witch cannot get out again. ”

“ But there are still places where witchcraft may be said to exist literally, for there the professors of the art to all intents work miracles, because they are believed in. There is abundance of such faith extant, even in England. I have heard the names of three "white" witch doctors in as many towns in the West of England, who are paid a guinea a visit, their specialty being to "unlock," or neutralize, or defeat the evil efforts of black witches. ”

“ CHAP. II. A lawyer’s argument for the existence of witchcraft—Proofs of spectral impressions, from recollected perceptions—New England witches—Cardan—Donne—Jonson—The maid of France—and other visionaries.
In a compilation, on the duties of a Justice of Peace, published by Nelson, we meet with a proof of the existence of witchcraft, which the editor appears to have thought irrefragable. “It seems,” saith he, “that there must formerly have been such a crime as witchcraft, because divers statutes have been made against it.” ”

“ They are, if the belief and practice of witchcraft among them is any test; for in all those countries there are witches. I take up one of the New York City dailies of this very morning, and find in it the advertisements of seven Witches. In 1858, there were in full blast in New York and Brooklyn sixteen witches and two wizards. One of these wizards was a black man; a very proper style of person to deal with the black art.
Witch means, a woman who practices sorcery under an agreement with the devil, who helps her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may conjecture that other sympathetic means of destruction are employed against witchcraft. The following is expressly reported: the heart of a calf that has died is stuck all over with needles, enclosed in a bag, and thrown into flowing water before sunset.”786
There is the same reason for burning bewitched things. And the same thing holds good also of inanimate objects on which a witch has cast her spell. In Wales they say that “if a thing is bewitched, burn it, and immediately afterwards the witch will come to borrow something of you. If you give what she asks, she will go free ”

“ In France and England the witches were supposed to ride uniformly upon broom-sticks; but in Italy and Spain, the devil himself, in the shape of a goat, used to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened according to the number of witches he was desirous of accommodating. No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath, could get out by a door or window were she to try ever so much. Their general mode of ingress was by the key-hole, and of egress by the chimney, up which they flew, broom and all, with the greatest ease. ”