It will scarcely be credited, but to this very day the superstitious
belief in the power that certain medicinal substances possess of causing a
sympathetic fondness, still obtains, even amongst classes of the community
whose education one would imagine ought to have rendered such an absurdity
revolting. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the influence of love powders
and aphrodisiac drugs is universally confided in.
The ancients thought that there existed, not only various charms to kindle
amorous feelings, but also to check all fond desires. The latter influence
they considered as _malefices_, vulgarly called in more modern times,
"point tying." Plato, in his Republic, warns husbands to be on their guard
lest their domestic peace might be disturbed by these diabolical
practices. Lovers, separated from each other's embrace by these nefarious
enchantments, were said to be tied down. Thus Virgil,
Dic, Veneris vincula necto:
Terna tibi haec primum triplici diversa colore
Licia circumdo.
No power could release one from these bonds:
Quis neget et magicas nervos torpere per artes?
By the laws of the twelve tables such enchantments were punished with
death; and Numantina, wife of Plautius Sylvanus, was accused,
Injecisse carminibus et veneficiis vecordiam marito.
When Faustina, the gay bride of Marc Antonius was rapturously enamoured
with an histrionic favourite, she was only cured of her folly by a potion
in which some of the comedian's blood had been introduced. Petrarch
relates of Charlemagne, that this monarch was so fondly attached to a fair
lady, that after her death he carried about her embalmed body in a superb
coffin, until a venerable and learned bishop, who very wisely thought that
a living beauty was preferable to the remains of a departed one, rebuked
his sovereign for his irreligious and unnatural propensities, and revealed
to him the important secret of his love arising from a charm that lay
under the dead woman's tongue. Whereupon the bishop went to the corpse,
and drew from it a ring, which the emperor had scarcely looked upon when
he abhorred the former object of his attachment, and felt such an
extraordinary fancy for the bishop that he could not dispense with his
presence for a single moment, until the good prelate was so obseded with
royal favour that he cast the ring into a lake. From that moment
Charlemagne (his historian continues) "neglected all public business, and
went to live in the middle of a fen in the vicinity of Aix, where he built
a temple, near which he was finally buried."
St. Jerome, in the Life of Hilarius, mentions a young man who so
bephiltered a maiden that she fell desperately in love with him; and
Sigismundus Schereczius, in his chapter _De Hirco Nocturno_, affirms that
"unchaste women, by the help of these witches, the devil's kitchen-maids,
have their lovers brought to them during the night, and carried back
again, by a phantom flying in the air in the likeness of a goat." "I have
heard," he adds, "divers confess that they have been so carried on a
goat's back to their sweethearts many miles in a night." These wonderful
potions were made of strange ingredients, for amongst them we find a
man's blood chemically prepared, mandrake roots, dead men's clothes,
candles, a certain hair in a wolf's tail, a swallow's heart, dust of a
dove's heart, tongues of vipers, brains of a jackass, pebbles found in an
eagle's nest, together with "_palliola quibus infantes obvoluti
nascuntur_, _funis strangulati hominis_," &c. &c. &c. Cleghorn, in his
History of Minorca, tells us that water in which a hedgehog has been
allowed to run into corruption, was supposed to be possessed of similar
exciting powers; and a pulverized bit of a caul, scrapings of nails, and
chopped hair, are to this hour deemed equally effectual to obtain these
desirable ends.
Notwithstanding all these absurdities, it is undoubtedly true that certain
articles of food have been considered as endowed with aphrodisiac
properties; fish of various kinds, the mollusca and testaceous animals
more especially. Juvenal attributes this quality to oysters, which, in
this respect, with cockles and muscles have become vulgarly proverbial:
Grandia quae mediis jam noctibus ostrea mordet.
Wallich informs us that the ladies of his time had recourse on such
occasions to the brains of the _mustela piscis_. The _sepia octopus_ was
also in great repute; and Plautus, in his _Casina_, brings on an old man
who had just been purchasing some in the market. There is reason to
believe that these ideas were not altogether as absurd as they may appear.
Fourcroy and Vauquelin have attributed this influence to the presence of
phosphorus, which is well known to be highly exciting. In the East,
various vegetable productions are considered in the same light. Their
_hakims_ have numerous receipts for the purpose; amongst which we find
several electuaries,--such as the _diacyminum_, the _diaxylaloes_, the
confections of _Luffa Abunafa_, and the _chaschab abusidan_ of the
Arabians, of which wonderful effects are related.
The laws of every country have provided against the offence of witchcraft,
sorcery, conjuration, and enchantment. We find a statute of our first
James, making it "felony, without benefit of the clergy, under the penalty
of death, the act of all persons invoking any evil spirit, or consulting,
covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil
spirits; or taking up dead bodies from their graves, to be used in any
witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or killing or otherwise
hurting, any person by such infernal arts. And if any person should
attempt by sorcery to discover hidden treasures, or to restore stolen
goods, or to _provoke unlawful love_, (lawful love did not come within
these salutary provisions,) he or she should suffer imprisonment and
pillory for the first offence, and death for the second." Strange to say,
that act continued in force till very lately; and Blackstone observes,
"that many poor wretches were sacrificed thereby to the prejudice of their
neighbours, and their own illusions; not a few having, by some means or
other, confessed the fact at the gallows."
Nothing could be more absurd, nay atrocious, than the means judicially
resorted to at that period to detect witchcraft. Sir Robert Filmer
mentions two tests by fire: the first by burning the house of the
pretended witch: the other, by burning any animal supposed to have been
bewitched by her. In both these cases the witch would confess her
_malefices_!
Moreover, it was asserted that a witch, even while enduring the pangs of
torture, could only shed _three tears_, and those from the _left eye_;
this was considered a sufficient proof of guilt by the judges of the day!
Swimming a witch was another expedient; in this ordeal the hag was
stripped naked, and cross-bound, the right thumb to the left toe, and
_vice versa_. Thus prepared, she was thrown into a pond or a river; in
which, if guilty, she could not sink, for having by her compact with the
Devil renounced the waters of baptism, the waters in return refused to
receive her in their bosom.
Our wise legislators maintained that old women were generally selected by
the evil ones for their malicious purposes, and they usually appeared to
them in the form of a man wearing a black coat or gown; and sometimes,
especially in the north, with a bluish band and turned-up linen cuffs:
hard bargains were sometimes driven between the parties for the value of
the harridan's soul. This was also the case according to Echard, in the
negotiation between Oliver Cromwell and the Devil before the battle of
Worcester. There were black, white, and gray witches: some of them fond of
junketing and merry-making, and often would Satan play on a pipe or a
cittern to make them dance; and not unfrequently would he become enamoured
with their withered charms, when toads and horrible serpents were the
hated progeny of this unhallowed union. Sinclair tells us, in his
"Invisible World," of one Mr. Barton, who was burnt with his wife for
witchcraft, and who confessed, before he was tied to the stake, that he
had intrigued with the Devil in the shape of a comely lady, who had given
him 15_l._ for his trouble. His wife confessed at the same time, that the
Devil in the shape of a poodle dog used to dance before her, playing upon
the pipes with a candle under his tail. The Devil, particularly in
Scotland would ever and anon get up into a pulpit, and preach a sermon in
a voice "_hough_ and _gustie_."
Burton gives us some curious traditions of these devilish amours, and
quotes Philostratus's account of one Menippus Lycius, a young man
twenty-five years of age, who going between Cenchreas and Corinth, met a
phantom in the shape of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand,
carried him to her house in the suburbs of Corinth; and told him she was a
Phoenician by birth, and, if he would tarry with her he should hear her
sing and play, and drink such wine as never was drunk, and no man should
molest him, but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him.
The young man tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last
married her; to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who
by some probable conjecture, found her out to be a serpent--a lamia. When
she saw herself discovered, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent;
but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that
was in it vanished in an instant.
Florigerus also mentions the case of a young gentleman of Rome, "who on
his wedding day went out walking with his bride and some friends after
dinner; and towards the evening went to a tennis-court, and while he
played he took off his ring, and placed it upon the finger of a brass
_Venus statua_. The game finished, he went to fetch his ring; but Venus
had bent her finger upon it, and he could not get it off. Whereupon, loth
to make his companions tarry, he there left it, intending to fetch it the
next day, went thence to supper, and so to bed; but in the night Venus had
slipped between him and his wife, and thus troubled him for several
successive nights. Not knowing how to help himself, he made his moan to
one Palumbus, a learned magician; who gave him a letter, and bade him at
such a time of the night, in such a cross way, where old Saturn would pass
by with his associates, to deliver to him the script: the young man, of a
bold spirit, accordingly did it; and when the old fiend had read it, he
called Venus to him, who was riding before him, and commanded her to
deliver the ring, which forthwith she did."
Burton further quotes St. Augustine, Bodin, Paracelsus, and various other
learned men, who firmly maintain that the Devil is particularly fond of a
little flirtation with the ladies; and a Bavarian widower, who was sadly
grieving for his beloved wife, was visited by Old Nick, who had assumed
the form of the departed lady, and promised to live with him and comfort
him on the condition that he would leave off swearing and blaspheming; he
vowed it, married her, and she brought him several children; till one day,
in an uxorious quarrel, he began to swear like a Pandour, whereupon she
vanished, and never more was seen.
The preservatives against witchcraft were as absurd as the fear it
inspired: some hair, parings of nails, or any part of a person bewitched,
were put into a stone bottle, with crooked nails, then corked close, and
hung up the chimney; this expedient occasioned most horrible tortures to
the witch, until the bottle was uncorked. Witches, moreover, cannot pursue
their victims beyond the middle of a running stream, provided the
fugitives had been baptized. I have now a patient under my care who
fancies himself bewitched, and asserts that the only way to guard against
the evil is by driving a nail in the impress left by a witch's foot on the
threshold, when she will discontinue her visits.
By an act of George II. these offences were considered as misdemeanors,
and punished with a year's imprisonment, and standing four times in the
pillory. There is no doubt that, notwithstanding the absurdity of such
delusions and impostures, legislators must endeavour to secure the
ignorant against these impositions, which are frequently of a perilous
nature, and have been often known to occasion serious accidents, and even
death. Many of the substances thus administered are of a most dangerous
description, and these enchantments are not unfrequently resorted to with
sinister intentions. It is related of the Asiatic women, that, under the
pretext of giving these philters, they sometimes times prepare a beverage
from the seeds of the _Datura Metel_, which produces a lethargic
stupefaction of a convenient nature. The mischief that has frequently
arisen from the exhibition of the _Lytta vesicatoria_ has been observed
and recorded by every medical practitioner. The _Diablotini_, a kind of
incentive sugar-plums of the Italians, have been known to occasion the
most serious accidents; and the celebrated French actor Mole lost his life
in one of these experiments. Yet penal enactments, in such cases, must be
resorted to with much circumspection; for prohibition too frequently
promotes the evils which it is designed to check.
Montesquieu observes, that the ridiculous stories that are generally told,
and the many impositions that have been discovered in all ages, are enough
to demolish all faith in such a dubious crime, if the contrary evidence
were not also extremely strong. Unquestionably, we have too many
instances of criminal acts of superstition in which supernatural agency is
believed; but did this philosophic writer mean to say that we have
evidence of actual witchcraft and sorcery? It is with some degree of
regret that we find our learned Blackstone avow his belief in these
matters, and we borrow his own words on the subject: "To deny the
possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at
once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God, in various passages
both of the New and Old Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to
which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either
by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws which at least
suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits. The civil law
punishes with death not only the sorcerers themselves, but also those who
consult them; imitating in the former the express law of God, 'Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live!'" Without calling into doubt the records of
supernatural agency in Holy Writ, evident manifestations of the power and
the will of the Divinity at that period, it may fairly be asked--Can we
promulgate such opinions in the present times, when miraculous events do
not seem to be permitted by our Creator in His inscrutable wisdom, without
incurring the risk of plunging the ignorant in all the dark horrors of the
early ages? Montesquieu himself has justly remarked, "that the most
unexceptionable conduct, the purest morals, and the constant practice of
every duty in life, are not a sufficient security against the suspicion of
crimes like these." And yet, because, forsooth, there may be made to
appear _examples seemingly attested_, and that on the faith of such an
attestation the most absurd and cruel _prohibitory laws_ have been enacted
by every _nation in the world, on the supposition of the possibility of
such a crime_, however ignorant and brutalized by superstition these
nations are or may have been, man is not only authorized by the Scriptures
to persecute some poor miserable fool or vagrant impostor unto death, but
he is sanctioned in founding this barbarous persecution on the laws of
God! The mind sickens at such doctrines. It is grievous to find a man like
our Addison sharing in such preposterous notions; notions which would
induce a doubtful by-stander not to interfere with a mob of miscreants who
were drowning some unfortunate old woman "for a witch."
"There are," says Addison, "some opinions in which a man should stand
_neuter_, without engaging his assent to one side or the other. It is with
this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft. When I
consider whether there are such persons in the world as those we call
witches, my mind is divided between the two opposite opinions; or rather,
to speak my thoughts freely, I believe in general that _there is_, and has
been, such a thing as witchcraft, but, at the same time, can give no
credit to any particular instance of it."
Are we then still to believe that there may exist some supernatural hag,
that can
--------Untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches--------
Control the moon, make ebbs and flows,
And deal in her command without her power?
or who, with the influence given to them by our poet Rowe,
By force of potent spells, of bloody characters,
And conjurations horrible to hear,
Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep,
And set the ministers of hell to work,
with the liver of a blaspheming Jew, the nose of a Turk, the lips of a
Tartar, the finger of a birth-strangled babe, and ditch-delivered by a
drab, &c. &c.? If we are to believe in witches with Blackstone and
Addison, we must give credence to all these mystic means by which they
_work_ their _way_. All these _means_ have been _seemingly attested_, and
led, from the just horror they inspired, to those _prohibitory laws_
enacted by _every nation_; as if the laws of man could be of any avail in
resisting the _admitted_ supernatural powers with which these witches,
sorcerers, magicians, &c. must have been invested by the Deity to perform
their terrific operations! If we deny this authority we are Manicheans.