Bygone Beliefs Part 8

(1) The late Sir WILLIAM CROOKES' _Experimental Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism_ contains evidence in favour of the reality of this phenomenon very difficult to gainsay.

Pseudo-DIONYSIUS cla.s.sified the angels into three hierarchies, each subdivided into three orders, as under:--

_First Hierarchy_.--Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones;

_Second Hierarchy_.--Dominions, Powers, and Authorities (or Virtues);

_Third Hierarchy_.--Princ.i.p.alities, Archangels, and Angels,--

and this cla.s.sification was adopted by AGRIPPA and others.

Pseudo-DIONYSIUS explains the names of these orders as follows: "... the holy designation of the Seraphim denotes either that they are kindling or burning; and that of the Cherubim, a fulness of knowledge or stream of wisdom.... The appellation of the most exalted and pre-eminent Thrones denotes their manifest exaltation above every grovelling inferiority, and their super-mundane tendency towards higher things;...

and their invariable and firmly-fixed settlement around the veritable Highest, with the whole force of their powers.... The explanatory name of the Holy Lords.h.i.+ps (Dominions) denotes a certain unslavish elevation... superior to every kind of cringing slavery, indomitable to every subserviency, and elevated above every dissimularity, ever aspiring to the true Lords.h.i.+p and source of Lords.h.i.+p.... The appellation of the Holy Powers denotes a certain courageous and unflinching virility... vigorously conducted to the Divine imitation, not forsaking the G.o.dlike movement through its own unmanliness, but unflinchingly looking to the super-essential and powerful-making power, and becoming a powerlike image of this, as far as is attainable....The appellation of the Holy Authorities... denotes the beautiful and unconfused good order, with regard to Divine receptions, and the discipline of the super-mundane and intellectual authority... conducted indomitably, with good order towards Divine things.... (And the appellation) of the Heavenly Princ.i.p.alities manifests their princely and leading function, after the Divine example...."(1) There is a certain grandeur in these views, and if we may be permitted to understand by the orders of the hierarchy, "discrete" degrees (to use SWEDENBORG'S term) of spiritual reality--stages in spiritual involution,--we may see in them a certain truth as well. As I said, all virtue, power, and knowledge which man has from G.o.d was believed to descend to him by way of these angelical hierarchies, step by step; and thus it was thought that those of the lowest hierarchy alone were sent from heaven to man. It was such beings that white magic pretended to evoke. But the practical occultists, when they did not make them altogether fatuous, attributed to these angels characters not distinguishable from those of the devils. The description of the angels in the _Heptemeron_, or _Magical Elements_,(2) falsely at may be taken as fairly characteristic. Of MICHAEL and the other spirits of Sunday he writes: "Their nature is to procure Gold, Gemmes, Carbuncles, Riches; to cause one to obtain favour and benevolence; to dissolve the enmities of men; to raise men to honors; to carry or take away infirmities." Of GABRIEL and the other spirits of Monday, he says: "Their nature is to give silver; to convey things from place to place; to make horses swift, and to disclose the secrets of persons both present and future." Of SAMAEL and the other spirits of Tuesday he says: "Their nature is to cause wars, mortality, death and combustions; and to give two thousand Souldiers at a time; to bring death, infirmities or health," and so on for RAPHAEL, SACHIEL, ANAEL, Ca.s.sIEL, and their colleagues.(1b)

(1) _On the Heavenly Hierarchy_. See the Rev. JOHN PARKER'S translation of _The Works of_ DIONYSIUS _the Areopagite_, vol. ii. (1889), pp. 24, 25, 31, 32, and 36.

(2) The book, which first saw the light three centuries after its alleged author's death, was translated into English by ROBERT TURNER, and published in 1655 in a volume containing the spurious _Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy_, attributed to CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, and other magical works. It is from this edition that I quote.

(1b) _Op. cit_., pp. 90, 92, and 94.

Concerning the evil planetary spirits, the spurious _Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy_, attributed to CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, informs us that the spirits of Saturn "appear for the most part with a tall, lean, and slender body, with an angry countenance, having four faces; one in the hinder part of the head, one on the former part of the head, and on each side nosed or beaked: there likewise appeareth a face on each knee, of a black s.h.i.+ning colour: their motion is the moving of the wince, with a kinde of earthquake: their signe is white earth, whiter than any Snow."

The writer adds that their "particular forms are,--

A King having a beard, riding on a Dragon.

An Old man with a beard.

An Old woman leaning on a staffe.

A Hog.

A Dragon.

An Owl.

A black Garment.

A Hooke or Sickle.

A Juniper-tree."

Concerning the spirits of Jupiter, he says that they "appear with a body sanguine and cholerick, of a middle stature, with a horrible fearful motion; but with a milde countenance, a gentle speech, and of the colour of Iron. The motion of them is flas.h.i.+ngs of Lightning and Thunder; their signe is, there will appear men about the circle, who shall seem to be devoured of Lions," their particular forms being--

"A King with a Sword drawn, riding on a Stag.

A Man wearing a Mitre in long rayment.

A Maid with a Laurel-Crown adorned with Flowers.

A Bull.

A Stag.

A Peac.o.c.k.

An azure Garment.

A Sword.

A Box-tree."

As to the Martian spirits, we learn that "they appear in a tall body, cholerick, a filthy countenance, of colour brown, swarthy or red, having horns like Harts horns, and Griphins claws, bellowing like wilde Bulls.

Their Motion is like fire burning; their signe Thunder and Lightning about the Circle. Their particular shapes are,--

A King armed riding upon a Wolf.

A Man armed.

A Woman holding a buckler on her thigh.

A Hee-goat.

A Horse.

A Stag.

A red Garment.

Wool.

A Cheeslip."(1)

(1) _Op. cit_., pp. 43-45.

The rest are described in equally fantastic terms.

I do not think I shall be accused of being unduly sceptical if I say that such beings as these could not have been evoked by any magical rites, because such beings do not and did not exist, save in the magician's own imagination. The proviso, however, is important, for, inasmuch as these fantastic beings did exist in the imagination of the credulous, therein they may, indeed, have been evoked. The whole of magic ritual was well devised to produce hallucination. A firm faith in the ritual employed, and a strong effort of will to bring about the desired result, were usually insisted upon as essential to the success of the operation.(2) A period of fasting prior to the experiment was also frequently prescribed as necessary, which, by weakening the body, must have been conducive to hallucination. Furthermore, abstention from the gratification of the s.e.xual appet.i.te was stipulated in certain cases, and this, no doubt, had a similar effect, especially as concerns magical evocations directed to the satisfaction of the s.e.xual impulse.

Add to these factors the details of the ritual itself, the nocturnal conditions under which it was carried out, and particularly the suffumigations employed, which, most frequently, were of a narcotic nature, and it is not difficult to believe that almost any type of hallucination may have occurred. Such, as we have seen, was ELIPHAS LEVI'S view of ceremonial magic; and whatever may be said as concerns his own experiment therein (for one would have thought that the essential element of faith was lacking in this case), it is undoubtedly the true view as concerns the ceremonial magic of the past. As this author well says: "Witchcraft, properly so-called, that is ceremonial operation with intent to bewitch, acts only on the operator, and serves to fix and confirm his will, by formulating it with persistence and labour, the two conditions which make volition efficacious."(1b)

(2) "MAGICAL AXIOM. In the circle of its action, every word creates that which it affirms.

DIRECT CONSEQUENCE. He who affirms the devil, creates or makes the devil.

"_Conditions of Success in Infernal Evocations_. 1, Invincible obstinacy; 2, a conscience at once hardened to crime and most subject to remorse and fear; 3, affected or natural ignorance; 4, blind faith in all that is incredible, 5, a completely false idea of G.o.d. (ELIPHAS LEVI: _Op. cit_., pp. 297 and 298.)

(1b) ELIPHAS LEVI: _Op. cit_., pp. 130 and 131.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG in one place writes: "Magic is nothing but the perversion of order; it is especially the abuse of correspondences."(2) A study of the ceremonial magic of the Middle Ages and the following century or two certainly justifies SWEDENBORG in writing of magic as something evil. The distinction, rigid enough in theory, between white and black, legitimate and illegitimate, magic, was, as I have indicated, extremely indefinite in practice. As Mr A. E. WAITE justly remarks: "Much that pa.s.sed current in the west as White (_i.e_. permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The popular conceptions concerning the diabolical spheres, which have been all accredited by magic, may have been gross exaggerations of fact concerning rudimentary and perverse intelligences, but the wilful viciousness of the communicants is substantially untouched thereby."(1b)

(2) EMANUEL SWEDENBORG: _Arcana Caelestia_, SE 6692.

(1b) ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE: _The Occult Sciences_ (1891), p. 51.

These "psychological experiments" were not, save, perhaps, in rare cases, carried out in the spirit of modern psychical research, with the high aim of the man of science. It was, indeed, far otherwise; selfish motives were at the root of most of them; and, apart from what may be termed "medicinal magic," it was for the satisfaction of greed, l.u.s.t, revenge, that men and women had recourse to magical arts. The history of goeticism and witchcraft is one of the most horrible of all histories.

The "Grimoires," witnesses to the superst.i.tious folly of the past, are full of disgusting, absurd, and even criminal rites for the satisfaction of unlawful desires and pa.s.sions. The Church was certainly justified in attempting to put down the practice of magic, but the means adopted in this design and the results to which they led were even more abominable than witchcraft itself. The methods of detecting witches and the tortures to which suspected persons were subjected to force them to confess to imaginary crimes, employed in so-called civilised England and Scotland and also in America, to say nothing of countries in which the "Holy" Inquisition held undisputed sway, are almost too horrible to describe. For details the reader may be referred to Sir WALTER SCOTT'S _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_ (1830), and (as concerns America) COTTON MATHER'S The _Wonders of the Invisible World_ (1692). The credulous Church and the credulous people were terribly afraid of the power of witchcraft, and, as always, fear destroyed their mental balance and made them totally disregard the demands of justice. The result may be well ill.u.s.trated by what almost inevitably happens when a country goes to war; for war, as the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL has well shown, is fear's offspring. Fear of the enemy causes the military party to persecute in an insensate manner, without the least regard to justice, all those of their fellow-men whom they consider are not heart and soul with them in their cause; similarly the Church relentlessly persecuted its supposed enemies, of whom it was so afraid. No doubt some of the poor wretches that were tortured and killed on the charge of witchcraft really believed themselves to have made a pact with the devil, and were thus morally depraved, though, generally speaking, they were no more responsible for their actions than any other madmen. But the majority of the persons persecuted as witches and wizards were innocent even of this.

However, it would, I think, be unwise to disregard the existence of another side to the question of the validity and ethical value of magic, and to use the word only to stand for something essentially evil.

SWEDENBORG, we may note, in the course of a long pa.s.sage from the work from which I have already quoted, says that by "magic" is signified "the science of spiritual things"(1) His position appears to be that there is a genuine magic, or science of spiritual things, and a false magic, that science perverted: a view of the matter which I propose here to adopt.

The word "magic" itself is derived from the Greek "magos," the wise man of the East, and hence the strict etymological meaning of the term is "the wisdom or science of the magi"; and it is, I think, significant that we are told (and I see no reason to doubt the truth of it) that the magi were among the first to wors.h.i.+p the new-born CHRIST.(2)

(1) _Op. cit_., SE 5223.

(2) See The Gospel according to MATTHEW, chap. ii., verses 1 to 12.