[Transcriber's note: The spelling peculiarities of the original have been
retained in this etext.]
THAUMATURGIA,
OR
ELUCIDATIONS OF THE MARVELLOUS.
BY
AN OXONIAN.
1835
"Bombastes kept the devil's bird,
Shut in the pommel of his sword,
And taught him all the cunning pranks,
Of past and future mountebanks."
_Hudibras_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Demonology--The Devil, a most unaccountable personage--Who is he?--His
predilection for old women--Traditions concerning evil spirits &c.
CHAPTER II.
Magic and Magical rites.
Jewish magi.
CHAPTER III.
On the several kinds of magic.
Augury, or divinations drawn from the flight and feeding of birds.
Aruspices, or divinations drawn from brute or human sacrifices.
Divisions of divination by the ancients--prodigies, etc.
CHAPTER IV.
History of Oracles--The principal oracles of antiquity.
The oracle of Jupiter Hammon. The oracle of Delphos, or Pythian Apollo.
Ceremonies practised on consulting oracles.
Oracles often equivocal and obscure.
Urim and Thummim.
Reputation of oracles, how lost.
Cessation of oracles.
Had demons any share in the oracles?
Of oracles, the artifices of priests of false divinities.
CHAPTER V.
The British Druids, or magi--Origin of fairies--Ancient
superstitions--Their skill in medicine, etc.
The British magi.
CHAPTER VI.
Aesculapian mysteries, etc.
CHAPTER VII.
Inferior deities attending mankind from their birth to their decease.
CHAPTER VIII.
Judicial astrology--Its chemical application to the prolongation of life
and health--Alchymical delusions.
CHAPTER IX
Alchymical and astrological chimera.
The Horoscope, a tale of the stars.
The Fated Parricide; an oriental tale of the stars.
Application of astrology to the prolongation of life, etc.
Advertisement.
Spring. \
Summer. |_ influences of,
Autumn. |
the winter quarter. /
CHAPTER X.
Oneirocritical presentiment, illustrating the cause, effects, principal
phenomena, and definition of dreams, etc.
Cause of Dreams.
Poetical illustrations of the effects of the imagination in dreams.
Principal phenomena in dreaming.
Definition of dreams.
CHAPTER XI.
On Incubation, or the art of healing by visionary divination.
CHAPTER XII.
On amulets, charms, talismans--Philters, their origin and imaginary
efficacy, etc.
Amulets used by the common people.
Eccentricities, caprices, and effects, of the imagination.
Doctrine of Effluvia--Miraculous cures by means of charms, amulets, etc.
CHAPTER XIII.
On talismans--some curious natural ones, etc.
CHAPTER XIV.
On the medicinal powers attributed to music by the ancients.
CHAPTER XV.
Presages, prodigies, presentiments, etc.
CHAPTER XVI.
Phenomena of meteors, optic delusions, spectra, etc.
CHAPTER XVII.
Elucidation of some ancient prodigies.
Magical pretensions of certain herbs, etc.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The practice of Obeah, or negro witchcraft--charms--their knowledge of
vegetable poison--secret poisoning.
CHAPTER XIX.
On the origin and superstitious influence of rings.
CHAPTER XX.
Celestial influences--omens--climacterics--predominations.--Lucky and
unlucky days.--Empirics, etc.
Absurdities of Paracelsus, and Van Helmont.
CHAPTER XXI.
Modern empiricism.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Rosicrucians or Theosophists.
THAUMATURGIA,
OR
ELUCIDATIONS OF THE MARVELLOUS.
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 "God 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
gods--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 multitude. 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 hell, 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 hell," 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
identity, 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 God, a heav'n and hell?
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 Shipton, 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 hell and eternal damnation 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 illustrated 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 pass'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 title 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 rivalship 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 assizes,
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 passions inflames and the appetite 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 assist 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 classification 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
PRINCIPALITIES; 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
noble devils were, likewise, canvassed, 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 assigned a certain
district, had many noble 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 assistance 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 passions 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 superstitious
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 asserted, 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 gods 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 _Praenestites_, from their
superintending human affairs.