From the day that Louis XIV. dissolved the Parliament of Rouen, which
had condemned several persons in the Province of Vire to death for the
crime of sorcery, but few sorcerers have been seen in France.
It was in 1682 that Urbain Grandier was tortured and burned alive for
having launched a malediction against the Ursulines of Loudun.
A violent reaction occurred against the Inquisitors, theologians,
and their accomplice butchers, thanks to the courageous intervention
of eminent philosophers and savants, who were justly indignant at
the crimes of the Roman Catholic priesthood. This reaction clearly
demonstrated the fact that the innumerable victims of religious
intolerance in the Middle Ages were not sorcerers, nor possessed of
the devil, nor minions of Hell. Psychologists and moralists claimed
that the victims of these delusions were insane, persons suffering
from semi delusions, subjects of monomania. Science classed these
unfortunates into several groups, among which may be enumerated persons
afflicted with hallucinations, demonomaniacs, erotomaniacs, subjects
of lycanthropy, etc., without counting vampires, choreomaniacs,
lypemaniacs, and others whose attacks are recognized by medical science.
The encyclopedists and their disciples declared themselves satisfied,
inasmuch as psychological experts had done away with the absurd
traditions of the Middle Ages as well as antique superstitions. The
death penalty for demonidolatry was removed, but the doors of the
insane asylum opened for its followers.
Could any better arrangement have been made at the present day? Let us
take the history of this famous epidemic of demonidolatry of other days
and examine the documentary evidence offered against those accused of
the crime of sorcery, passing the testimony through the crucible of
modern science, pathology, physiology, together with all observable
symptoms, holding in view meanwhile modern neurological discoveries;
let us strive, in a word, to solve this great psychological question,
which has greatly agitated the human understanding for four hundred
years past.
We believe _what is, is the truth_, and in order to best judge the
facts narrated, it is well to first arrange our knowledge as to the
psychological condition of Occidental populations during the Middle
Ages, a condition that was only the continuation of the ideas and
traditions of antiquity, modified by the fanatical prejudices of a new
religion and by a cruel and barbarous social Constitution.
If history authorizes us, in fact, to conclude that the occult sciences
have existed from the earliest periods of antiquity, that the people
who brought learning from the Orient to the Occident, have at all
times admitted the existence of genii, angels, and demons, it is easy
to explain the action that such mysterious traditions would have on
the ignorant minds of the peasantry of the Middle Ages, bowed under
the yoke of slavery to feudal Lords and the clerical despotism of the
Romish Church.
Let us interrogate these historical texts with impartiality, and
analyze these ancient theogonies, which are, so to speak, the _proces
verbaux_ of the philosophic development of the human mind, and we
shall see whether we can admit that mental diseases may prevail
_epidemically_ for several generations, like the pestilential maladies
of the fourth century, for example.
We know that it was in India, the cradle of human genius, that the
doctrine of supernaturalism, of good and bad spirits exerting an occult
influence on mankind, was born. Ancient history shows such a belief
goes back to antique times. Zoroaster, inspired by _Ahura Mazda_,
the Omniscient, wrote, in the Zend Avesta, the text and commentaries
of the religious law dedicated to the Aryas of India and Persia.
This law had for its object the destruction of the cult of _dews_ or
demons, who infested the earth under human forms, and also to repress
the naturalistic instinct of the most ancient people of _Asia_, by
initiating them in a faith for Celestial genii.
The disciples of Zoroaster were the _Magi_; that is to say, the learned
men of the day, but they modified the doctrine of the Prophet, which
the Guebres alone preserved in its purity, with the fundamental
doctrine of the dualism of light and darkness, represented by _Ormazd_
and _Ahriman_, the spirit of the blest and the spirit of the damned.
The Chaldeans, celebrated from times of antiquity for their knowledge,
not only of astronomy, but all other sciences, adopted the doctrines of
the Zend-Avesta, and their Magi transmitted the same to the Egyptians,
Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and finally to the Gauls, whose adepts
were the Druids.
The science or Magic of the Chaldeans was only magnetism, somnambulism,
and spiritism.
Says M. F. Fabart: “The Magi, according to certain _bas reliefs_
exhumed in Oriental countries, knew the virtue of magnetic passes. We
see figures with hands extended, influencing by their gestures the
subjects, who, seated before them, have closed eyes.
“The Pythonesses and Sybills did not have the power of foresight until
they had passed through the crisis of an artificial somnambulism, and
we find passages in antique authorities where this imposed sleep is
discussed.[48]
In one of my preceding works I have spoken of several very curious
passages in the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, where he speaks of the oracles
of the female magician Erichto and the responses of the Pythonesses in
the Temple of Delphi to the inquiries of Appius. Cassandra, priestess
to Apollo in the tragedy of Agamemnon, by Seneca the tragedian, is a
perfect type of the hypnotizable hysteric, and, if the poet does not
describe the methods followed by the priests of the temple in order to
magnetize their subjects, we find them noted by other Latin authors
in terms so explicit as to leave no doubt as to their knowledge of
magnetic passes (hypnotism).
Says Cœlius Aurelianus: “We make circular movements with the hands
before the eyes of the patient. Under our gaze the subject follows the
movements of our hands, the eyes blinking.” It is while giving the
treatment for catalepsy that the Roman physician, the contemporary of
Galen, initiates us in magnetic practice. After giving a description
of the neurosis, which he characterizes by prostration, immobility,
rigidity of neck, loss of voice, stupor of the senses, widely opened
eyelids, fixity of the eyes and ocular expression, the Latin author
teaches us how to relieve the disease and partially waken the movement,
senses, and intelligence of the patient; and he magnetizes, as is
clearly indicated in the following lines: “_Atque ita, si ante oculos
eorum quisquam digitos circum moveat, palpebrant ægrotantes, et suo
obtutu manuum trajectionem sequuntur; vel si quicquam profecerint etiam
toto obtutu converso attendunt; et inclamati, respicientes lacrymantur
nihil dicentes, sed volentium respondere vultum æmulantes_.”[49]
The precepts of Zoroaster were differently modified among ancient
people. Moses, who wished the glory of being the great prophet of
Israel, wrote the law of Jehovah and abjured the Magi, by whom he had
been initiated. The Hebrews meantime preserved the Mazadean religion
in memory; they created magic. Ahriman became Astaroth, Beelzebub,
Asmodeus and other demons, who had for interpreters the Pythonesses
and Prophetesses (_mediums_). Ormazd was transferred into a legion
of angels and archangels, who appeared to men to make prophecies.
Presently the Jewish magicians invented the _Kabbala_, occult science,
by which, in pronouncing certain words, they performed miracles and
submitted supernatural powers to the caprices of the human will; they
were above all necromancers.
The occult sciences of the ancients, necromancy and magic, had, as will
be observed, more or less connection with the phenomena of magnetism
of the present day. Meantime necromancy resembled modern spiritualism,
toward which the researches of present day magnetizers tend. The
necromancers invoked the souls of the dead to know the future and the
secrets of the present. The Jews pursued this study with much ardor,
notwithstanding the prohibition of Moses, who wished them not _to
speak to wood_. We know that the Pythoness (_witch_) of Endor evoked
the spirit of Samuel before Saul on the eve of battle and predicted
the King’s death. The grotto where this celebrated medium lived still
exists, and she receives, it is said, the travelers who visit her from
far and wide near Mount Tabor.
Magic was also known by the High Priests in Pharaoh’s court. Like the
Magi of Medea and Chaldea they invoked the spirits and supernatural
powers by methods and ceremonies consisting principally of gestures and
songs.
Hermes Trismegistus, whom the Alchemists regard as their master,
spread the science of occult magic. Following him we see the mystical
doctrines of the Orient flourish at Alexandria with the founders of
neoplatonism. These taught that the _Goetie_ was the supernatural art
which is practiced by the aid of wicked spirits, that the _Magie_
produced mysterious manifestations with the assistance of material
demons and superior spirits; that the _Pharmacists_ controlled spirits
by means of philters and elixirs.
In Greece and in Italy the celestial genii were believed in, and they
multiplied to infinity, peopling the Olympus of Polytheism. Priests
profited by the superstitious idea of the people who invoked the aid
of the witches and sibyls who derived their wisdom from the Magi of
the Orient. Following the example, the historians, philosophers and
poets were apparently led to the belief in all the Genii, in the power
of spirits and their intimate relations with men through the medium of
seers, in a condition of frenzy or somnambulism (trance).
We know that the poet Hesiodus in his theogony, that Plato, from the
time of his initiation with the Hermetic doctrines, that Aristotle in
his philosophical works, all admit the existence of immaterial beings
interesting themselves in the affairs of humanity. The Pythagorians,
on their side, affirmed their power of controlling demons by keeping
themselves in constant meditation, abstinence and chastity.[50]
During all times of antiquity, there were corporations of priests,
philosophers, theosophists, thaumaturgists and other sects, who
exercised the trade of invoking spirits by conjuring them with charms,
by enchantments and witchcraft, and changing by their aid the laws of
nature, to command the elements and accomplish other extraordinary
feats. In order to do these prodigies they had recourse to cabalistic
formulæ, indicated in conjuring books, or by incantations, magical
circles, or simply by magnetic power.
Simon of Samaria, Circe, Medea, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus,
and the famous Canidie, so justly cursed by Horace, belonged to this
clan of magicians, gnostics, enchanters and mediums, who acquainted
the people with the occult arts of the magi of Chaldea. It is only
necessary to study history to be convinced of this fact.
Damis, the historian and pupil of Apollonius of Tyana, has left us
the biography of his master, the most remarkable thaumaturgist of
antiquity. It is in this work that he shows that while Apollonius
was lecturing on philosophy at Ephesus, he stopped in the midst of
his speech and cried out to the murderer who, at the same moment,
assassinated Domitian at Rome, “Courage, Stephanus; kill the tyrant!”
Apollonius had sojourned long in India, and all his disciples have
attested the marvelous things he could do. He cured incurable diseases
and made other miracles that astonished his contemporaries who were
partisans, like himself, of the doctrines of Pythagoras.
Porphyrius published the fifty-four treatises of his master Plotinus,
the illustrious neoplatonist, a work in which we find all the ideas
of contemporaneous experimental psychology and a mystical philosophy
supported on extasy, contemplation and hypnotism—ideas which were again
enunciated one day by the enchanter Merlin, Albertus Magnus, Pic de
la Mirandolle, Lulle, Cornelius Agrippa, Count Saint Germain, Joseph
Balsamo, Robert Fludd, Richard Price and the _freres_ of _Rose Croix_.
But, before these, there were others who believed they preserved the
mysterious secrets of nature, the Illuminati, the seers and others
not our immediate ancestors; the Druids in the dark forests of Gaul,
along with the Druidesses. Both classes belonged to the Sacerdotal
order, and only received the vestures of their sacred ministry after
twenty years consecrated to the study of astrology, laws of nature,
medicine and the Kabbala. Their theodicy taught the existence of one
God alone and the immateriality of the spirit, called after death to
be reincarnated an indetermined number of times up to the point when
perfection was obtained; when a new, more divine and happy distinction
was achieved. It admitted as a principal religious dogma the ascendant
metempsychosis, as in the case of the first magi and the great
Greek philosophers; also a multitude of genii and superior spirits
intermediate between the Divinity and mankind.
The _Druids_ were not only the priests, but dictators of Gaul; they
were assisted in their functions by the _Eubages_, the soothsayers and
sacrifices of their religion, by the _Bards_, the poets and heralds,
and the _Brenns_, who participated in supreme power. Druidism was
then an admixture of warlike ideas of the first inhabitants of Gaul,
together with the doctrines imported by the Magii from Chaldea.
So the Druids were the astronomers, physicians, surgeons, priests
and lawgivers. The Druidesses, descendants of the Pythonesses and
Sibyls of the Orient, spoke in oracles and predicted the future;
their influence was considerable and often surpassed that of the
Druid priests themselves, for they knew just as well how to use the
Kabbala and magic; and besides, as virgins, consecrated depositaries
of the secrets of God, they stood high in the eyes of the people. It
is for this reason that the Druids and Druidesses were, under Roman
domination, the defenders of national independence; but, forced to
take refuge in dense forests far removed from the people, persecuted
by the Romans, barbarians and Christians, they progressively became
magicians, enchanters, prophets and charmers, condemned by the Councils
and banished by civil authority.
It is at this epoch that evil spirits were noticed prowling around
in the shadows of night and indulging in acts of obscene depravity.
There were the _Gaurics_, beings the height of giants; the _Suleves_,
beardless personages who were succubi, attacking travelers; and the
_Dusiens_ were incubi, demons who deflowered young girls during their
maiden slumbers.
Saint Augustin accorded his belief to all these fables, which were
retailed throughout the country, affirming that we have no right to
question the existence of these demons or libertine spirits, which make
impure attacks on persons while asleep. (_Hanc assidue immunditiam et
tentare et efficere_,—Saint Augustin, in his “City of God.”)
Decadence slowly ensued, so that in the seventh century Druidism
disappeared, but the practice of magic, occult art, and the mysterious
science of spirits were transmitted from generation to generation, but
lessened in losing the philosophic character of ancient times. In a
word, magic became sorcery, and its adepts were no longer recruited
save in the infamous and ignorant classes of society. The adoration of
nature and God, the immortality of the soul, the grand ceremonies held
at the foot of gigantic oak trees, gave way to hideous demons, gross
superstitions, witchcraft, and the most immoral abberations. Occultism
still subjugated the masses, but the science had fallen into the hands
of the profane and of charlatans.