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, was frequently a man of learning and intellectual abilities,
sometimes of comparative opulence and respectable situation in society.
But the witch or wizard was almost uniformly old, decrepid, and nearly
or altogether in a state of penury. The functions, however, of the
witch and the sorcerer were in a great degree the same. The earliest
account of a witch, attended with any degree of detail, is that of
the witch of Endor in the Bible, who among other things, professed
the power of calling up the dead upon occasion from the peace of
the sepulcher, it appears clear, that the witch of Ender was not a
being such as those believed in by our ancestors, who could transform
themselves and others into the appearance of the lower animals, raise
and allay tempests, frequent the company and join the revels of evil
spirits, and, by their counsel and assistance, destroy human lives, and
waste the fruits of the earth, or perform feats of such magnitude as to
alter the face of nature. The witch of Endor was a mere fortune-teller,
to whom, in despair of all aid or answer from the Almighty, the
unfortunate King of Israel had recourse in his despair, and by whom, in
some way or other, he obtained the awful certainty of his own defeat
and death. She was liable, indeed, deservedly, to the punishment of
death, for intruding herself upon the task of the real prophets, by
whom the will of God was, in that time, regularly made known. But her
existence and her crimes can go no length to prove the possibility
that another class of witches, not otherwise resembling her than as
called by the same name, either existed at a more recent period, or
were liable to the same capital punishment, for a very different and
much more doubtful class of offences, which, however odious, are
nevertheless to be proved possible before they can be received as a
criminal charge.
Witches also claimed the faculty of raising storms, and in various
ways disturbing the course of nature. They appear in most cases to
have been brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They
occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They
blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the
heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts.
They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to
incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with
incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago for
the power of the “evil eye.” The vulgar, both great and small, dreaded
their displeasure, and sought by small gifts, and fair speeches, but
insincere, and the offspring of terror only, to avert the pernicous
consequences of their malice. They were famed for fabricating small
images of wax, to represent the objects of their persecution; and, as
these by gradual and often studiously protracted degrees wasted before
the fire, so the unfortunate butts of their resentment perished with a
lingering, but inevitable death.
This faith in extraordinary events, and superstitious fear of what is
supernatural, has diffused itself through every climate of the world,
in a certain stage of human intellect, and while refinement had not
yet got the better of barbarism. The Celts of antiquity had their
Druids, a branch of whose special profession was the exercise of magic.
The Chaldeans and Egyptians had their wise men, their magicians, and
their sorcerers. The Negroes have their fore-tellers of events, their
amulets, and their reporters and believers of miraculous occurrences. A
similar race of men was found by Columbus and the other discoverers of
the New World in America; and facts of a parallel nature are attested
to us in the islands of the South Seas. And, as phenomena of this
sort were universal in their nature, without distinction of climate,
whether torrid or frozen, and independantly of the discordant manners
and customs of different countries, so have they been very slow and
recent in their disappearing. Queen Elizabeth sent to consult Dr. John
Dee, the astrologer, respecting a lucky day for her coronation; King
James the First employed much of his learned leasure upon questions of
witchcraft and demonology, in which he fully believed; and Sir Matthew
Hale in the year 1664 caused two old women to be hanged upon a charge
of unlawful communion with infernal agents.