Thaumaturgia Part 1

Thaumaturgia.

by An Oxonian.

CHAPTER I.

DEMONOLOGY--THE DEVIL, A MOST UNACCOUNTABLE PERSONAGE--WHO IS HE?--HIS PREDILECTION FOR OLD WOMEN--TRADITIONS CONCERNING EVIL SPIRITS, &C.

Children and old women have been accustomed to hear so many frightful things of the cloven-footed potentate, and have formed such diabolical ideas of his satanic majesty, exhibiting him in so many horrible and monstrous shapes, that really it were enough to frighten Beelzebub himself, were he by any accident to meet his prototype in the dark, dressed up in the several figures in which imagination has embodied him.

And as regards men themselves, it might be presumed that the devil could not by any means terrify them half so much, were they actually to meet and converse with him face to face: so true it is that his satanic majesty is not near so black as he is painted.

However useful the undertaking might prove, to give a true history of this "tyrant of the air," this "G.o.d of the world," this "terror and overseer of mankind," it is not our intention to become the devil's biographer, notwithstanding the facility with which the materials might be collected. Of the devil's origin, and the first rise of his family, we have sufficient authority on record; and, as regards his dealings, he has certainly always acted in the dark; though many of his doings both moral, political, ecclesiastical, and empirical, have left such strong impressions behind them, as to mark their importance in some transactions, even at the present period of the christian world. These discussions, however, we shall leave in the hands of their respective champions, in order to take, as we proceed, a cursory view of some of the _diableries_ with which mankind, in imitation of this great master, has been infected, from the first ages of the world.

The Greeks, and after them the Romans, conferred the appellation of Demon upon certain _genii_, or spirits, who made themselves visible to men with the intention of either serving them as friends, or doing them an injury as enemies. The followers of Plato distinguished between their G.o.ds--or _Dei Majorum Gentium_; their demons, or those beings which were not dissimilar in their general character to the good and bad angels of Christian belief,--and their heroes. The Jews and the early christians restricted the name of Demon to beings of a malignant nature, or to devils properly so called; and it is to the early notions entertained by this people, that the outlines of later systems of demonology are to be traced.

It is a question, we believe, not yet set at rest by the learned in these sort of matters, whether the word _devil_ be singular or plural, that is to say, whether it be the name of a personage so called, standing by himself, or a noun of mult.i.tude. If it be singular, and used only personal as a proper name, it consequently implies one imperial devil, monarch or king of the whole clan of h.e.l.l, justly distinguished by the term DEVIL, or as our northern neighbours call him "the muckle horned deil," and poetically, after Burns "auld Clootie, Nick, or Hornie," or, according to others, in a broader set form of speech, "the devil in h.e.l.l," that is, the "devil of a devil," or in scriptural phraseology, the "great red dragon," the "Devil or Satan." But we shall not cavil on this mighty potentate's name; much less dispute his ident.i.ty, notwithstanding the doubt that has been broached, whether the said devil be a real or an imaginary personage, in the shape, form, and with the faculties that have been so miraculously ascribed to him; for

If it should so fall out, as who can tell, But there may be a G.o.d, a heav'n and h.e.l.l?

Mankind had best consider well,--for fear It be too late when their mistakes appear.

The devil has always, it would seem, been particularly partial to old women; the most ugly and hideous of whom he has invariably selected to do his bidding. Mother s.h.i.+pton, for instance, our famous old English witch, of whom so many funny stories are still told, is evidently very much wronged in her picture, if she was not of the most terrible aspect imaginable; and, if it be true, Merlin, the famous Welch fortune-teller, was a most frightful figure. If we credit another story, he was begotten by "_old nick_" himself. To return, however, to the devil's agents being so infernally ugly, it need merely be remarked, that from time immemorial, he has invariably preferred such _rational_ creatures as most belied the "human form divine."

The sybils, of whom so many strange prophetic things are recorded, are all, if the Italian poets are to be credited, represented as very old women; and as if ugliness were the _ne plus ultra_ of beauty in old age, they have given them all the hideousness of the devil himself. It will be seen, despite of all that has been said to the disadvantage of the devil, that he has very much improved in his management of worldly affairs; so much so, that, instead of an administration of witches, wizzards, magicians, diviners, astrologers, quack doctors, pettifogging lawyers, and boroughmongers, he has selected some of the wisest men as well as greatest fools of the day to carry his plans into effect. His satanic majesty seems also to have considerably improved in his taste; owing, no doubt, to the present improving state of society, and the universal diffusion of useful knowledge. Indeed, we no longer hear of cloven-footed devils, only in a metaphorical sense--fire and brimstone are extinct or nearly so; the embers of h.e.l.l and eternal d.a.m.nation are chiefly kept alive and blown up by ultras among the sectaries who are invariably the promoters of religious fanaticism. Beauty, wit, address, with the less shackled in mind, have superseded all that was frightful, and terrible, odious, ugly, and deformed. This subject is poetically and more beautifully ill.u.s.trated in the following demonological stanzas, which are so appropriate to the occasion, that we cannot resist quoting them as a further prelude to our subjects:

When the devil for weighty despatches Wanted messengers cunning and bold, He pa.s.s'd by the beautiful faces And picked out the ugly and old.

Of these he made warlocks and witches To run of his errands by night, Till the over-wrought hag-ridden wretches Were as fit as the devil to fright.

But whoever has been his adviser, As his kingdom increases in growth, He now takes his measures much wiser, And trafics with beauty and youth.

Disguis'd in the wanton and witty, He haunts both the church and the court; And sometimes he visits the city, Where all the best christians resort.

Thus dress'd up in full masquerade, He the bolder can range up and down For he better can drive on his trade, In any one's name than his own.

To be brief, the devil, it appears, is by far too cunning still for mankind, and continues to manage things in his own way, in spite of bishops, priests, laymen, and new churches. He governs the vices and propensities of men by methods peculiarly his own; though every crime or extortion, subterfuge or design, whether it be upon the purse or the person, will not make a man a devil; it must nevertheless be confessed, that every crime, be its magnitude or complexion what it may, puts the criminal, in some measure, into the devil's power, and gives him an ascendancy and even a t.i.tle to the delinquent, whom he ever afterwards treats in a very magisterial manner.

We are told that every man has his attendant evil genius, or tutelary spirit, to execute the orders of the master demon--that the attending evil angel sees every move we make upon the board; witnesses all our actions, and permits us to do mischief, and every thing that is pernicious to ourselves;--that, on the contrary, our good spirit, actuated by more benevolent motives, is always accessary to our good actions, and reluctant to those that are bad. If this be the case, it may be fairly asked, how does it happen that those two contending spirits do not quarrel and give each other black eyes and broken heads during their rivals.h.i.+p for pre-eminence? And why does the evil tempting spirit so often prevail?

Instead of literally answering these difficult questions, it may be resolved into a good argument, as an excellent allegory to represent the struggle in the mind of man between good and evil inclinations. But to take them as they actually are, and merely to talk by way of natural consequence--for to argue from nature is certainly the best way to get to the bottom of the devil's story,--if there are good and evil spirits attending us, that is to say, a good angel and a devil, then it is no unjust reproach to say, when people follow the dictates of the latter, that _the devil's in them_, or that _they are devils_! or, to carry the simile a point farther, that as the generality, and by far the greatest number of people follow and obey the evil spirit and not the good one, and that the power predominating is allowed to be the nominating power, it must then of course be allowed that the greater part of mankind have the devil in them, which brings us to the conclusion of our argument; and in support of which the following stanzas come happily to our recollection.

To persons and places he sends his disguises, And dresses up all his banditti, Who, as pickpockets flock to country a.s.sizes, Crowd up to the court and the city.

They're at every elbow, and every ear, And ready at every call, Sir; The vigilant scout, plants his agents about, And has something to do with us all, Sir.

In some he has part, and some he has whole, And of some, (like the Vicar of _Baddow_) It can neither be said they have body or soul; And only are devils in shadow.

The pretty and witty are devils in masque; The beauties are mere apparitions; The homely alone by their faces are known, And the good by their ugly conditions.

The beaux walk about like the shadows of men, And wherever he leads them they follow; But tak'em, and shak'em, there's not one in ten But's as light as a feather, and hollow.

Thus all his affairs he drives on in disguise, And he tickles mankind with a feather, Creeps in at one's ear, and looks out at our eyes, And jumbles our senses together.

He raises the vapours and prompts the desires, And to ev'ry dark deed holds the candle; The pa.s.sions inflames and the appet.i.te fires, And takes every thing by the handle.

Thus he walks up and down in complete masquerade And with every company mixes; Sells in every shop, works at every trade, And ev'ry thing doubtful perplexes.

The Jewish traditions concerning evil spirits are various, some of which are founded on Scripture, some borrowed from the opinions of the Pagans, some are fables of their own invention, and some are allegorical.

The demons of the Jews were considered either as the distant progeny of Adam or Eve, resulting from an improper intercourse with supernatural beings, or of Cain. As the doctrine, however, was extremely revolting to some few of the early Christians, they maintained that demons were the souls of departed human beings, who were still permitted to interfere in the affairs of the Earth, either to a.s.sist their friends or to persecute their enemies. But this doctrine did not obtain.

About two centuries and a half ago an attempt, in a condensed form, was made, to give the various opinions entertained of demons at an early date of the christian era; and it was not until a much later period of Christianity, that a more decided doctrine relative to their origin and nature was established. These tenets involved certain very knotty points respecting the fall of those angels, who, for disobedience, had forfeited their high abode in Heaven. The gnostics of early christian times, in imitation of a cla.s.sification of the different orders of spirits by Plato, had attempted a similar arrangement with respect to an hierarchy of angels, the gradation of which stood as follows.

The first, and highest order, was named SERAPHINS; the second, CHERUBINS; the third was the order of THRONES; the fourth, of DOMINIONS; the fifth, of VIRTUES; the sixth, of POWERS; the seventh, of PRINc.i.p.aLITIES; the eighth, of ARCHANGELS; the ninth, and lowest, of ANGELS. This fable was, in a pointed manner, censured by the Apostles: yet strange to say, it almost outlived the pneumatologists of the middle ages. These schoolmen, in reference to the account that Lucifer rebelled against heaven, and that Michael the archangel warred against him, long agitated the momentous question, what order of angels fell on the occasion. At length it became the prevailing opinion that Lucifer was of the order of Seraphins. It was also proved after infinite research, that Agares, Belial, and Barbatos, each of them deposed angels of great rank, had been of the order of Virtues; that Beleth, Focalor, and Phoenix, had been of the order of Thrones; that Gaap had been of the order of Powers, and Virtues; and Murmur of Thrones and Angels. The pretensions of many n.o.ble devils were, likewise, canva.s.sed, and, in an equally satisfactory manner, determined; a multiplicity of incidents connected therewith were arranged, which previously had been matter of considerable doubt and debate. These sovereign devils, to each of whom was a.s.signed a certain district, had many n.o.ble spirits subordinate to them whose various ranks and precedence were settled with all the preciseness of heraldic distinction:--there were, for instance, devil-dukes; devil-marquises; devil-earls; devil-knights; devil-presidents, devil-archbishops, and bishops; prelates; and, without question, devil-physicians, and apothecaries.

In the middle ages, when conjuration had attained a certain pitch of perfection, and was regularly practised in Europe, devils of distinction were supposed to make their appearance under decided forms, by which they were as well recognised, as the head of any ancient family would be by his crest and armorial bearings. The shapes they were accustomed to adopt were registered among their names and characters.

Although the leading tenets of Demonology may be traced to the Jews and early Christians, yet they were matured by our early communications with the Moors of Spain, who were the chief philosophers of the dark ages, and between whom and the natives of France and Italy, a great communication existed. Toledo, Seville and Salamanca, became the greatest schools of magic. At the latter city predilections on the black art from a consistent regard to the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the a.s.sistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in the abstract sciences, in the knowledge of precious stones, in alchymy, in the various languages of mankind and of the lower animals; in the Belles-Lettres, Moral Philosophy, Pneumatology, Divinity, Magic, History, and Prophecy. They could controul the winds and waters, and the stellar influences. They could cause earthquakes, induce diseases or cure them, accomplish all vast mechanical undertakings, and release souls out of Purgatory. They could influence the pa.s.sions of the mind, procure the reconciliation of friends or of foes, engender mutual discord, induce mania, melancholy, or direct the force and objects of human affection. Such was the Demonology taught by its orthodox professors. Yet other systems of it were devised, which had their origin in the causes attending the propagation of christianity; for it must have been a work of much time to eradicate the almost universal belief in the pagan deities, which had become so numerous as to fill every creek and corner of the universe with fabulous beings. Many learned men, indeed, were induced to side with the popular opinion on the subject, and did nothing more than endeavour to unite it with their acknowledged systems of Demonology.

They taught that the objects of heathen reverence were fallen angels in league with the Prince of Darkness, who, until the appearance of our Saviour, had been allowed to range on the earth uncontrolled, and to involve the world in spiritual darkness and delusion.

According to the various ranks which these spirits held in the vast kingdom of Lucifer, they were suffered, in their degraded state, to take up their abode in the air, in mountains, in springs, or in seas. But although the various attributes ascribed to the Greek and Roman deities, were, by the early teachers of christianity, considered in the humble light of demoniacal delusions, yet, for many centuries they possessed great influence over the minds of the vulgar. The notion of every man being attended by an evil genius was abandoned much earlier than the far more agreeable part of the same doctrine which taught that, as an antidote to their influence, each individual was also accompanied by a benignant spirit. "The ministration of angels," says a writer in the Athenian Oracle, "is certain; but the manner _how_, is the knot to be untied." It was an opinion of the early philosophers that not only kingdoms[1] had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius or good spirit, to protect and admonish him through the medium of dreams and visions. Such were the objects of superst.i.tious reverence derived from the Pantheons of Greece and Rome, the whole synod of which was supposed to consist of demons, who were still actively bestirring themselves to delude mankind. But in the west of Europe, a host of other demons, far more formidable, were brought into play, who had their origin in Celtic, Teutonic, and even in Eastern fables; and as their existence, as well as influence, was boldly a.s.serted, not only by the early christians, but even by the reformers, it was long before the rites to which they were accustomed were totally eradicated.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Thus the Penates, or household G.o.ds presided over new-born infants.

Every thing had its guardian or peculiar genius: cities, groves, fountains, hills, were all provided with keepers of this kind, and to each man was allotted no less than two--one good, the other bad (Hor.

Lib. II. Epist. 2.) who attended him from the cradle to the grave. The Greeks called them _demons_. They were named _Praenest.i.tes_, from their superintending human affairs.

CHAPTER II.

MAGIC AND MAGICAL RITES, &C.

Few subjects present to a philosophic eye more matter of curious, important and instructive research than the natural history of religion.

Some sort of religious service has been found to prevail in all ages and nations, from the most rude and barbarous periods of human society, to those of cultivation and refinement. In these periods are to be traced specimens strongly marked with exertions of the feelings, and faculties of men in every situation almost that can be supposed. It is from the contemplation of these exertions that we learn what sort of creature man is; that we discover the extent of his powers, and the tendency of his desires: and that we become acquainted with the force of culture and civilization upon him, by comparing the degrees of improvement he has attained in the various stages of society through which he has pa.s.sed.

It seems to be a principle established by experience, that mankind in general have at no time been able, by the operation of their own mutual powers, to ascend in their inquiries to the great comprehensive foundation of true religion,--the knowledge of a first cause. This idea is too grand, too distinct, or too refined for the generality of the human race. They are surrounded by sensible objects, and strongly attached to them; they are in a great measure unaccustomed to the most simple and obvious degrees of abstraction, and they can scarcely conceive anything to have a real existence that may not become an object of their senses. Possessed of such sentiments and views, they are fully prepared in embracing all the follies and absurdities of superst.i.tion.

They wors.h.i.+p every thing they either love or fear, in order to procure the continuance of favours enjoyed, or to avert that resentment they may have reason to dread. As their knowledge of nature is altogether imperfect, and as many events every moment present themselves, upon which they can form no theoretical conclusion, they fly for satisfaction to the most simple, but most ineffectual of all solutions--the agency of invisible beings, with which, in their opinion, all nature is filled.

Hence the rise of Polytheism and local deities, which have overspread the face of the earth, under the different t.i.tles of guardian G.o.ds or tutelary saints. Hence magnificent temples and splendid statues have been erected to aid the imagination of votaries, and to realize objects of wors.h.i.+p, which, though supposed to be always hovering around, seldom condescend to become visible.

After obtaining some information concerning present objects, the next cause of solicitude and inquiry to the mind of man, is to penetrate a little into the secrets of futurity. The same tutelary G.o.ds who bestowed their care, and exerted their powers to procure present pleasure and happiness for mankind, were supposed not averse to grant them, in this respect also, a little indulgence. Hence the famous oracular responses of antiquity; hence the long train of conjurers, fortune-tellers, astrologers, necromancers, magicians, wizards, and witches, that have been found in all places and at all times; nor have superior knowledge and civilization been sufficient to extirpate such characters, by demonstrating the futility and absurdity of their views.

Among the ancients, this superst.i.tion was a great engine of state. The respect paid to omens, auguries and oracles, was profound and universal; and the persons in power monopolized the privilege of consulting and interpreting them. They joined the people in expressing their veneration; but there is little reason to doubt that they conducted the responses in such a manner as best suited the purposes of government. On this account, it would not be difficult for the oracle to emit predictions, which, to all those unacquainted with the secret, would appear altogether astonis.h.i.+ng and unaccountable. It would seem that this principle alone is sufficient to explain all the phenomena of ancient oracles.

Though devination has long ceased to be an instrument of government, abundance of designing persons have not been wanting in latter ages, who found much interest in taking advantage of the weakness or credulity of their fellow creatures. Against this pestilent and abandoned race of men, most civilized countries have enacted penal laws. But what rendered such persons peculiarly detestable in modern times, was the communication which they were supposed to hold with the devil, to whom they sold themselves, and from whom, in return, they derived their information. And by this principle the penal statutes, instead of extirpating, inflamed the evil. They alarmed the imaginations of the people; they tempted them to impute the cause of their misfortunes and disappointment to the malice or resentment of their neighbours; they induced them to trust to their suspicions, much more than to their reason; and they multiplied witches and wizards, by putting into possession of every foolish informer the means of punishment. In several countries of Europe, these statutes still subsist; they were not abolished in Britain till a period still at no great distance. Since the abolition of persecution, the faith of witchcraft has disappeared even among the vulgar. It was long found inconsistent with any considerable progress in philosophy.