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, as we shall see hereafter, 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 sepulchre. 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 pernicious consequences of
their malice. They were famed for fabricating small images of wax, to
represent the object 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.