WITCHCRAFT.
Minor gods--Saint and Satyr--Tutelaries--Spells--Early Christianity
and the poor--Its doctrine as to pagan deities--Mediæval
Devils--Devils on the stage--An Abbot's revelations--The fairer
deities--Oriental dreams and spirits--Calls for Nemesis--Lilith
and her children--Neoplatonicism--Astrology and Alchemy--Devil's
College--Shem-hammphorásch--Apollonius of Tyana--Faustus--Black Art
Schools--Compacts with the Devil--Blood-covenant--Spirit-seances in
old times--The Fairfax delusion--Origin of its devil--Witch, goat,
and cat--Confessions of Witches--Witchcraft in New England--Witch
trials--Salem demonology--Testing witches--Witch trials in
Sweden--Witch Sabbath--Mythological elements--Carriers--Scotch
Witches--The cauldron--Vervain--Rue--Invocation of Hecaté--Factors
of Witch persecution--Three centuries of massacre--Würzburg
horrors--Last victims--Modern Spiritualism.
St. Cyprian saw the devil in a flower. [153] That little vision may
report more than many more famous ones the consistency with which
the first christians had developed the doctrine that nature is the
incarnation of the Evil Spirit. It reports to us the sense of many
sounds and sights which were heard and seen by ears and eyes trained
for such and no other, all showing that the genii of nature and
beauty were vanishing from the earth. Over the Ægean sea were heard
lamentations and the voice, 'Great Pan is dead!' Augustus consults
the oracle of Apollo and receives reply--
Me puer Hebræus, Divos Deus ipse gubernans,
Cedere sede jubet, tristremque redire sub orcum;
Aris ergo dehinc tacitis abscedito nostris.
But while the rage of these Fathers towards all the great gods and
goddesses, who in their grand temples represented 'the pride of life,'
was remorseless, they were comparatively indifferent to the belief or
disbelief of the lower classes in their small tutelary divinities. They
appear almost to have encouraged belief in these, perhaps appreciating
the advantages of the popular custom of giving generous offerings
to such personal and domestic patrons. At a very early period there
seems to have arisen an idea of converting these more plebeian spirits
into guardian angels with christian names. Thus Jerome relates in
his Life of the first Hermit Paul, that when St. Anthony was on his
way to visit that holy man, he encountered a Centaur who pointed
out the way; and next a human-like dwarf with horns, hooked fingers,
and feet like those of a goat. St. Anthony believing this to be an
apparition of the Devil, made the sign of the Cross; but the little
man, nowise troubled by this, respectfully approached the monk,
and having been asked who he was, answered: 'I am a mortal, and one
of those inhabitants of the Desert whom the Gentiles in their error
worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi: I am delegated
by my people to ask of thee to pray for us to our common God, who we
know has descended for the salvation of the world, and whose praises
resound in all the earth.' At this glorification of Christ St. Anthony
was transported with joy, and turning towards Alexandria he cried,
'Woe to thee, adulterous city, which adorest animals as gods!'
Perhaps the evolution of these desert demons into good christians would
have gone on more rapidly and completely if the primitive theologians
had known as much of their history as comparative mythology has
disclosed to the modern world. St. Anthony was, however, fairly on
the track of them when he turned towards Alexandria. Egypt appears
to have been the especial centre from which were distributed through
the world the fetish guardians of provinces, towns, households and
individuals. Their Serapes reappear in the Teraphim of Laban, and many
of the forms they used reappear in the Penates, Lares, and genii of
Latin countries. All these in their several countries were originally
related to its ancient religion or mythology, but before the christian
era they were very much the same in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. They were
shaped in many different, but usually natural forms, such as serpents,
dogs, boys, and old men, though often some intimation was given of
their demonic character. They were so multiplied that even plants
and animals had their guardians. The anthropomorphic genii called the
Patrii, who were supposed to preside over provinces, were generally
represented bearing weapons with which they defended the regions of
which they were patrons. These were the Averrunci or Apotropæi.
There are many interesting branches of this subject which cannot be
entered into here, and others have already been considered in the
foregoing parts of this work. It is sufficient for my present purpose
to remark, that, in the course of time, all the households of the world
had traditional guardians; these were generally represented in some
shape on amulets and talismans, on which were commonly inscribed the
verbal charms by which the patron could be summoned. In the process
of further time the amulets--especially such as were reproduced
by tribes migrating from the vicinity of good engravers--might
be marked only with the verbal charms; these again were, in the
end, frequently represented only by some word or name. This was the
'spell.' Imagination fails in the effort to conceive how many strata of
extinct deities had bequeathed to the ancient Egyptians those mystical
names whose exact utterance they believed would constrain each god so
named to appear and bind him to serve the invoker's purpose whether
good or evil. [154] This idea continued among the Jews and shaped
the commandment, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God
in vain.'
It was in these diminutive forms that great systems survived among
the common people. Amid natural convulsions ancient formations of
faith were broken into fragments; in the ebb and flow of time these
fragments were smoothed, as it were, into these talismanic pebbles. Yet
each of these conveyed all the virtue which had been derived from the
great and costly ceremonial system from which it originally crumbled;
the virtue of soothing the mind and calming the nerves of sufferers
with the feeling that, though they might have been assailed by
hostile powers, they had friendly powers too who were active in their
behalf--Vindicators, to recall Job's phrase--who at last would stand
by them to the end. In the further ebb and flow of generations the
mass of such charms are further pulverised into sand or into mud; but
not all of them: amid the mud will be found many surviving specimens,
and such mud of accumulated superstitions is always susceptible of
being remoulded after such lingering models, should occasion demand.
Erasmus, in his 'Adages,' suggests that it was from these genii of
'the Gentiles' that the christians derived their notion of each person
being attended by two angels, a good and a bad. Probably he was but
half right. The peoples to whom he refers did not generally believe
that each man was attended by a bad spirit, a personal enemy. That was
an honour reserved for individuals particularly formidable to the evil
powers,--Adam, Jacob, Hercules, or Zoroaster. The one preternatural
power attending each ordinary individual defended him from the general
forces of evil. But it was Christianity which, in the gradual effort
to substitute patron-saints and guardian-angels of its own for the
pagan genii, turned the latter from friends to enemies, and their
protecting into assailing weapons.
All the hereditary household gods of what is now called Christendom
were diabolised. But in order that the masses might turn from them
and invoke christian guardians, the Penates, Lares, and genii had to
be belittled on the one hand, and the superior power of the saints
and angels demonstrated. When Christianity had gained the throne of
political power, it was easy to show that the 'imps,' as the old
guardians were now called, could no longer protect their invokers
from christian punishment, or confer equal favours.
Christianity conquered Europe by the sword, but at first that sword
was not wielded against the humble masses. It was wielded against
their proud oppressors. To the common people it brought glad tidings
of a new order, in which, under the banner of a crucified working-man
and his (alleged) peasant mother, all caste should disappear but that
of piety and charity. Christ eating with publicans and sinners and
healing the wayside cripples reappeared in St. Martin dividing his
embroidered cloak with a beggar--type of a new aristocracy. They
who worshipped the Crucified Peasant in the rock-cave of Tours
which St. Martin had consecrated, or in little St. Martin's Church
at Canterbury where Bertha was baptized, could not see the splendid
cathedrals now visible from them, built of their bones and cemented
with their blood. King Ethelbert surrendered the temple of his idol
to the consecration of Augustine, and his baptized subjects had no
difficulty in seeing the point of the ejected devil's talons on the
wall which he assailed when the first mass was therein celebrated.
Glad tidings to the poor were these that the persecuted first
missionaries brought to Gaul, Britain, and Germany. But they did not
last. The christians and the pagan princes, like Herod and Pilate,
joined hands to crucify the European peasant, and he was reduced to
a worse serfdom than he had suffered before. Every humble home in
Europe was trampled in the mire in the name of Christ. The poor man's
wife and child, and all he possessed were victims of the workman of
Jerusalem turned destroyer of his brethren. Michelet has well traced
Witchcraft to the Despair of the Middle Ages. [155] The decay of
the old religions, which Christianity had made too rapid for it to
be complete, had left, as we have seen, all the trains laid for that
terrible explosion; and now its own hand of cruelty brought the torch
to ignite them. Let us, at risk of some iteration, consider some of
these combustible elements.
In the first place the Church had recognised the existence of the
pagan gods and goddesses, not wishing to imbreed in the popular mind a
sceptical habit, and also having use for them to excite terror. Having
for this latter purpose carved and painted them as ugly and bestial,
it became further of importance that they should be represented as
stupid and comparatively impotent. Baptism could exorcise them,
and a crucifix put thousands of them to flight. This tuition was
not difficult. The peasantries of Europe had readily been induced
to associate the newly announced (christian) Devil with their most
mischievous demons. But we have already considered the forces under
which these demons had entered on their decline before they were
associated with Satan. Many conquered obstructions had rendered the
Demons which represented them ridiculous. Hence the 'Dummeteufel' of
so many German fables and of the mediæval miracle-plays. 'No greater
proof,' says Dr. Dasent, 'can be given of the small hold which the
christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind, than the heathen aspect
under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which
he is always outwitted.' [156] 'The Germans,' says Max Müller,
'indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan
or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner.' [157]
A fair idea of the insignificance he and his angels reached may be
gained from the accompanying picture (Fig. 18), with which a mediæval
Missal now in possession of Sir Joseph Hooker is illuminated. It could
not be expected that the masses would fear beings whom their priests
thus held up to ridicule. It is not difficult to imagine the process
of evolution by which the horns of such insignificant devils turned
to the asinine ears of such devils as this stall carving at Corbeil,
near Paris (Fig. 19), which represented the popular view of the mastery
obtained by witches over devils. It must be remembered also that this
power over devils was in accordance with the traditions concerning
Solomon, and the subserviency of Oriental demons generally to the
lamps or charms to which they were bound.
What the popular christian devil had become in all the Northern
nations is sufficiently shown in the figure he presented in most
of the old miracle-plays and 'Moralities.' 'The Devill in his
fethers all ragged and rent,' [158] had horns, wide mouth, long
(sometimes up-turned) nose, red beard, cloven foot, and tail. He
was attended by a buffoon called Vice. 'And,' says Harsenet, 'it
was a pretty part in the old Church playes when the nimble Vice
would skip up nimbly like a Jackanapes into the Devil's necke, and
ride the Devil a course, and belabour him with a wooden dagger,
till he made him roar, whereat the people would laugh to see the
Devil so Vice-haunted.' [159] The two must have nearly resembled the
clown and his unhappy victim Pantaloon in our pantomimes, as to their
antics. It would seem that sometimes holy personages were caricatured
in the make-up of the stage-devil. Thus in 'Gammer Gurton's Needle'
we have this conversation:--
GAMMER. But, Hodge, had he no horns to push?
HODGE. As long as your two armes. Saw ye never fryer Rushe
Painted on cloth, with a side long cowe's tayle
And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nayle?
For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his brother;
Loke, even what face fryer Rushe had, the devil had such another.
In the scene of Christ's delivering souls from purgatory, the Devil
is represented as blowing lustily a horn to alarm his comrades,
and crying, 'Out, out, aronzt!' to the invader. He fights with a
three-pronged fork. He and his victims are painted black, [160] in
contrast with the souls of the saved, which are white. The hair was
considered very important. [161] When he went to battle, even his
fiery nature was sometimes represented in a way that must have been
more ludicrous than impressive. [162]
The insignificance to which the priests had reduced the devil in the
plays, where they were usually the actors, reflected their own petty
routine of life. They could conceive of nothing more terrible than
their own mean mishaps and local obstructions. One great office of the
Devil was to tempt some friar to sleep when he should be at prayer,
[163] make another drink too much, or a third cast warm glances at
a village beauty. The Revelations of the Abbot Richalmus, written
seven hundred years ago, shows the Devil already far gone in his
process of diminution. The Devil here concentrates the energies
which once made the earth tremble on causing nausea to the Abbot,
and making the choir cough while he is preaching. 'When I sit down to
holy studies,' he says, 'the devils make me heavy with sleep. Then I
stretch my hands beyond my cuffs to give them a chill. Forthwith the
spirits prick me under my clothes like so many fleas, which causes me
to put my hands on them; and so they get warm again, and my reading
grows careless.' 'Come, just look at my lip; for twenty years has an
imp clung to it just to make it hang down.' It is ludicrous to find
that ancient characteristic of the gods of Death already adverted
to--their hatred of salt, the agent of preservation--descended from
being the sign of Job's constancy to Jehovah into a mere item of the
Abbot's appetite. 'When I am at dinner, and the devil has taken away my
appetite, as soon as I have tasted a little salt it comes back to me;
and if, shortly afterwards, I lose it again, I take some more salt,
and am once more an hungered.' [164]
One dangerous element was the contempt into which, by many causes,
the infernal powers had been brought. But a more dangerous one lay in
another direction. Though the current phrases of the New Testament
and of the Fathers of the Church, declaring this world, its wealth,
loves, and pleasures, to be all the kingdom of Satan, had become cant
in the mouths of priests ruling over Europe, it had never been cant
to the humble peasantries. Although they had degraded many devils
imported by the priests, it had been in connection with the declining
terrors of their native demonologies. But above these degraded and
hated gnomes and elves, whose paternity had been transferred from
Soetere to Satan, there was an array of beautiful deities--gentle
gods and goddesses traditionally revered and loved as protectors of
the home and the family--which had never really lost their hold on the
common people. They might have shrunk before the aggressive victories
of the Saints into little Fairies, but their continued love for the
poor and the oppressed was the romance of every household. What did
these good fairies do? They sometimes loaded the lowly with wealth,
if summoned in just the right way; they sang secrets to them from
trees as little birds, they smoothed the course of love, clothed
ash-maidens in fine clothes, transported people through the air,
enabled them to render themselves invulnerable, or invisible, to get
out of prisons, to vanquish 'the powers that be,' whether 'ordained of
God' or not. Now all these were benefits which, by christian theory,
could only be conferred by that Prince of this World who ministered to
'the pride of life.'
Into homes which the priest and his noble had stripped of happiness
and hope,--whose loving brides were for baptized Bluebeards, whose
hard earnings were taken as the price of salvation from devils whose
awfulness was departing,--there came from afar rumours of great wealth
and splendour conferred upon their worshippers by Eastern gods and
goddesses. The priests said all those were devils who would torture
their devotees eternally after death; yet it could not be denied
that the Moors had the secret of lustres and ornamentation, that
the heathen East was gorgeous, that all Christendom was dreaming of
the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. Granted that Satan had come westward
and northward, joined the scurvy crew of Loki, and become of little
importance; but what of Baal or Beelzebub, of Asmodeus, of the genii
who built Solomon's temple, of rich Pluto, of august Ahriman? Along
with stories of Oriental magnificence there spread through Christendom
names of many deities and demons; many of them beautiful names, too,
euphemism having generally managed to bestow melodious epithets alike
on deities feared and loved. In Faust's 'Miraculous Art and Book of
Marvels, or the Black Raven' (1469), the infernal heirarchy are thus
named:--King, Lucifer; Viceroy, Belial; Gubernatores, Satan, Beelzebub,
Astaroth, Pluto; Chief Princes, Aziel, Mephistopheles, Marbuel, Ariel,
Aniguel, Anisel, Barfael. Seductive meanings, too, corresponding to
these names, had filtered in some way from the high places they once
occupied into the minds of the people. Lucifer was a fallen star that
might rise again; Belial and Beelzebub were princes of the fire that
rendered possible the arts of man, and the Belfires never went out in
the cold North; Astarte meant beauty, and Pluto wealth; Aziel (Asael)
was President of the great College of occult arts, from whom Solomon
learned the secrets by which he made the jinni his slaves; Marbuel
was the artist and mechanic, sometimes believed to aid artisans who
produced work beyond ordinary human skill; Ariel was the fine spirit
of the air whose intelligence corresponded to that of the Holy Ghost
on the other side; Aniguel is the serpent of Paradise, generally
written Anisel; Anizazel is probably a fanciful relative of Azazel,
'the strong god;' and Barfael, who in a later Faust book is Barbuel,
is an orientalised form of the 'demon of the long beard' who holds
the secret of the philosopher's stone.
In a later chapter the growth of favourable views of the devil is
considered. Some of the legends therein related may be instructively
read in connection with the development of Witchcraft. Many rumours
were spread abroad of kindly assistance brought by demons to persons in
distress. But even more than by hopes so awakened was the witch aided
by the burning desire of the people for vengeance. They wanted Zamiel
(Samaël) to help them to mould the bullet that would not miss its
mark. The Devil and all his angels had long been recognised by their
catechists as being utilised by the Deity to execute his vengeance
on the guilty; and to serfs in their agony that devil who would not
spare prince or priest was more desired than even the bestower of
favours to their starving minds and bodies.
Under the long ages of war in Europe, absorbing the energies of men,
women had become the preservers of letters. The era of witchcraft in
Europe found that sex alone able to read and write, arts disesteemed
in men, among the peasantry at least. To them men turned when it had
become a priestly lesson that a few words were more potent than the
weapons of princes. Besides this, women were the chief sorcerers,
because they were the chief sufferers. In Alsace (1615), out of
seventy-five who perished as witches, sixty-two were women. The
famous Malleus Maleficorum, which did more evil than any work ever
published, derives femina from fide minus. Although in the Faust
legend Mephistopheles objects to marriage, many stories represent
diabolical weddings. Particular details were told of the marriage of
Satan with the daughter of a Sorceress at Egnischen (1585), on which
occasion the three towers of the castle there were said to have been
illuminated, and a splendid banquet spread, the favourite dish being
a ragout of bats. There was exquisite music, and a 'beautiful man'
blessed the nuptials. How many poor peasant girls must have had such
dreams as they looked up from their drudgery to the brilliant chateaux?
In the illuminated manuscript known as 'Queen Mary's Psalter' (1553)
there is a picture of the Fall of Man (Fig. 20) which possesses
far-reaching significance. It is a modification of that idea,
which gained such wide currency in the Middle Ages, that it was
the serpent-woman Lilith who had tempted Adam to eat the forbidden
fruit. In this picture, while the beautiful face and ample hair
of Lilith are given, instead of the usual female bust she has the
body of a cat. This nocturnal animal, already sacred to Freyja, the
Teutonic Venus, whose chariot it drew, gained a new mythological
career in the North by the large number of Southern and Oriental
stones which related it to the lunar and amorous demonesses. When
the gods fled before the Titans, Diana, as Ovid relates, changed
herself to a cat, and as infernal Hecate that animal was still
beside her. If my reader will turn to vol. i. p. 130, some of the
vast number of myths which prepared the cat to take its place as
familiar of the witch may be found. Whether the artist had Lilith in
his mind or not, the illumination in 'Queen Mary's Psalter' represents
a remarkable association of myths. For Lilith was forerunner of the
mediæval mothers weeping for their children; her voice of perpetual
lamentation at the cruel fate allotted her by the combined tyranny
of God and man was heard on every sighing wind; and she was the
richly dressed bride of the Prince of Devils, ever seeking to tempt
youth. Such stories floated through the mind of the Middle Ages,
and this infernal Madonna is here seen in association with the cat,
beneath whose soft sparkling fur the goddess of Love and Beauty was
supposed to be still lurking near the fireside of many a miserable
home. Some fragrance of the mystical East was with this feline beauty,
and nothing can be more striking than the contrast which the ordinary
devils beside her present. Their unseductive ugliness and meanness is
placed out of sight of the pair tempted to seek the fruit of forbidden
knowledge. They inspire the man and woman in their evidently eager
grasping after the fruit, which here means the consultation of fair
fortune-tellers and witches to obtain that occult knowledge for which
speculative men are seeking in secret studies and laboratories.
Those who have paid attention to the subject of Witchcraft need not
be reminded that its complexity and vastness would require a larger
volume than the present to deal with it satisfactorily. The present
study must be limited to a presentation of some of the facts which
induce the writer to believe that, beneath the phenomena, lay a
profound alienation from Christianity, and an effort to recall the
banished gods which it had superseded.
The first christian church was mainly Jewish, and this is also to say
that it inherited the vast Angelolatry and the system of spells which
that tribe had brought from Babylon. To all this was now superadded
the accumulation of Assyrian and Egyptian lore which was re-edited
in the form of Neoplatonicism. This mongrel mass, constituted of
notions crumbled from many systems, acquired a certain consistency
in Gnosticism. The ancient Egyptians had colleges set apart for
astrological study, and for cultivation of the art of healing by
charms. Every month, decade, day of the year had its special guardian
in the heavens. The popular festivals were astronomic. To the priests
in the colleges were reserved study of the sacred books in which
the astrological secrets were contained, and whose authorship was
attributed to the god Thoth, inventor of writing, the Greek Hermes,
and, later, Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus. The zodiac is a memorial of
the influence which the stars were supposed to exert upon the human
body. Alchemy (the word is Egyptian, Kémi meaning 'black earth')
was also studied in connection with solar, lunar, and stellar
influences. The Alchemists dreamed of discovering the philosopher's
stone, which would change base metals to gold; and Diocletian, in
burning the Alchemists' books, believed that, in so doing, he would
deprive the Egyptians of their source of wealth. [165]
Imported into Greece, these notions and their cult had a twofold
development. Among the Platonists they turned to a naturalistic
and allegorical Demonology; among the uncultivated they formed a
Diabolarchy, which gathered around the terrible lunar phantasm--Hecate.
The astrological College of Egypt gave to the Jews their strange
idea of the high school maintained among the devils, already
referred to in connection with Asmodeus, who was one of its leading
professors. The rabbinical legend was, that two eminent angels, Asa
and Asael, remonstrated with the Creator on having formed man only
to give trouble. The Creator said they would have done the same as
man under similar circumstances; whereupon Asa and Asael proposed
that the experiment should be tried. They went to earth, and the
Creator's prediction was fulfilled: they were the first 'sons of God'
who fell in love with the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 2). They were
then embodied. In heaven they had been angels of especial knowledge in
divine arts, and they now used their spells to reascend. But their sin
rendered the spells powerless for that, so they repaired to the Dark
Mountains, and there established a great College of Sorcery. Among the
many distinguished graduates of this College were Job, Jethro, and
Bileam. It was believed that these three instructed the soothsayers
who attempted to rival the miracles of Moses before Pharaoh. Job
and Jethro were subsequently converted, but Bileam continued his
hostility to Israel, and remains a teacher in the College. Through
knowledge of the supreme spell--the Shem-hammphorásch, or real name
of God--Solomon was able to chain Professor Asmodeus, and wrest from
him the secret of the worm Schámir, by whose aid the Temple was built.
Traditions of the learning of the Egyptians, and of the marvels
learned by Solomon from Asa and Asael by which he compelled demons to
serve him, and the impressive story of the Witch of Endor, powerfully
influenced the inquisitive minds of Europe. The fierce denunciations of
all studies of these arts of sorcery by the early Church would alone
reveal how prevalent they were. The wonderful story of Apollonius of
Tyana, [166] as told by Philostratus, was really a kind of gospel to
the more worldly-minded scholars. Some rabbins, following the outcry
against Jesus, 'He casteth out devils by Beelzebub,' circulated at an
early date the story that Jesus had derived his power to work miracles
from the spell Shem-hammphorásch, which he found on one of the stones
of the Temple where Solomon had left it. Though Eusebius cast doubt
upon them, the christians generally do not appear to have denied the
miracles of Apollonius, which precisely copy those of Jesus from the
miraculous birth to the ascension, but even to have quoted them as
an evidence of the possibility of miracles. Celsus having attributed
the miracles of Jesus to sorcery, and said that magic influenced
only the ignorant and immoral, Origen replies that, in order to
convince himself of the contrary, he has only to read the memoirs
of Apollonius by Mæragenes, who speaks of him as a philosopher and
magician, who repeatedly exercised his powers on philosophers. Arnobius
and the fathers of the fourth century generally believed in the
Apollonian thaumaturgy and attributed it to magic. Aldus Manutius
published the book of Philostratus in the fifteenth century, and the
degree to which the fascinating and marvellous stories concerning
Apollonius fired the European imagination just awaking under the
breath of the Renaissance, may be estimated by the fury with which
the 'magician' was anathematised by Pico della Mirandola, Jean Bodin,
and Baronius. The book and the controversy attracted much attention,
and while the priests still continued to charge Apollonius with being a
'magician,' they appear to have perceived that it would have been more
to the point, so far as their real peril was concerned, to have proved
him an impostor. Failing that, Dr. Faustus and his fellow-professors
in the 'black art' were left masters of the situation. The people
had to digest the facts admitted, that a Pagan had learned, by
initiations into the astrological schools of Egypt and India, the
means of healing the sick, raising the dead, flying through the air,
throwing off chains, opening locks, rendering himself invisible,
and discerning the future.
There was a call for some kind of Apollonius, and Faustus arose. Side
by side flourished Luther and Faustus. To Roman Catholic eyes they
were twin sons of the Devil; [167] that they were characteristic
products of one moral age and force appears to me certain, even as
to-day the negations of Science and the revival of 'Spiritualism'
have a common root in radical disbelief of the hereditary dogmas
and forms of so-called religion. It is, however, not surprising that
Protestantism felt as much horror of its bastard brother as Science
has of the ghostly seances. Through the early sixteenth century we
can trace this strange Dr. Faustus ('auspicious,' he had chosen that
name) going about Germany, not omitting Erfurth, and talking in taverns
about his magic arts and powers. More is said of him in the following
chapter; it is sufficient to observe here, and it is the conclusion
of Professor Morley, who has sifted the history with his usual care,
that about him, as a centre of crystallisation, tales ascribed in
the first place to other conjurers arranged themselves, until he
became the popular ideal of one who sought to sound the depths of
this world's knowledge and enjoyments without help from the Church or
its God. The priests did not doubt that this could be done, nor did
the Protestants; they generally agreed that it could be accomplished
at cost of the soul. As angels of the good God must answer to the
formulas of invocation to those who had made a sacramental compact
with their Chief, so was it possible to share a sacrament of Satan,
and by certain invocations summon his infernal angels to obtain the
pleasures of this world of which he is Prince. A thousand years'
experience of the Church had left the poor ready to sign the compact
if they could secure some little earthly joy. As for Heaven, if it
were anything like what its ministers had provided for the poor on
earth, Hell might be preferable after all.
Dr. Wuttke, while writing his recent work on German superstitions, was
surprised to learn that there still exist in France and in Wurtemberg
schools for teaching the Black Art. A priest in the last-named country
wrote him that a boy had confessed to having passed the lower grade of
such a school, but, scared by the horrid ceremonies, had pronounced
some holy words which destroyed the effect of the wicked practices,
and struck the assembled Devil-worshippers with consternation. The
boy said he had barely escaped with his life. I have myself passed an
evening at a school in London 'for the development of Spirit-mediums,'
and possibly Dr. Wuttke's correspondent would describe these also
as Devil-worshippers. No doubt all such circles might be traced
archæologically to that Sorcerers' College said by the rabbins to
have been kept by Asa and Asael. But what moral force preserved
them? They do but represent a turning of methods made familiar by
the Church to coax benefits from other supernatural powers in the
hope that they would be less dilatory than the Trinity in bestowing
their gifts. What is the difference between St. Wolfram's God and King
Radbot's Devil? The one offers a golden mansion on earth warranted to
last through eternity, the other a like mansion in the skies receivable
after death. The Saint agrees that if Radbot's Devil can build him such
a house the king would be quite right to worship the architect. The
question of the comparative moral merits of the two invisible Powers
is not mentioned. This legend, related in a preceding chapter,
is characteristic of the motives to which the priesthood appealed
through the Middle Ages. It is no wonder that the people began to
appeal to the gods of their traditional Radbots, nor that they should
have used the ceremonial and sacramental formulas around them.
But to these were added other formulas borrowed from different
sources. The 'Compact with the Devil' had in it various elements. It
appears to have been a custom of the Odinistic religion for men to sign
acts of self-dedication to trusted deities, somewhat corresponding
to the votive tablets of Southern religion. It was a legend of
Odin that when dying he marked his arm with the point of a spear,
and this may have been imitated. In the 'Mysteries' of pagan and
christian systems blood played an important part--the human blood of
earlier times being symbolised by that of animals, and ultimately,
among christians, in wine of the Eucharist. The primitive history of
this blood-covenant is given in another chapter. Some astrological
formulas, and many of the deities invoked, spread through Europe with
the Jews. The actual, and quite as often fabulous, wealth of that
antichristian race was ascribed to Antichrist, and while christian
princes thought of such gold as legitimate spoil, the honest peasants
sought from their astrologers the transmitted 'key of Solomon,' in
virtue of which the demons served him. The famous 'Compact' therefore
was largely of christian-judaic origin, and only meant conveyance of
the soul in consideration of precisely the same treasures as those
promised by the Church to all whose names were written in the Lamb's
Book,--the only difference being in the period when redemption of
the respective issues of priest and astrologer should fall due. One
was payable during this life, the other after death.
The ceremonial performances of Witchcraft have also always existed
in some form. What we are familiar with of late as Spirit-seances
are by no means new. More than a hundred years ago, Mr. Wesley and
various clergymen were sitting at a table in Cock Lane, asking the
spirit 'Fanny' to rap twice if she were 'in a state of progressive
happiness.' Nay, a hundred years before that (1661), Sir Thomas
Chamberlain and others, sitting in a haunted house at Tedworth, Wilts,
asked 'Satan, if the Drummer set thee to work, give three knocks,
and no more, which it did very distinctly, and stopped.' [168] We
also learn that, in another town and case (1654), 'a naked arm and
hand appeared and beat the floor.' It would not be difficult to go
further back and find that the dark circle of our Spiritualists with
much of its apparatus has existed continuously through the Middle
Ages. The dark seance which Goethe has represented in Faust, Part
II., at which the spirits of Helen and Paris are evoked, is a very
accurate picture of the 'materialisations' now exhibited by mediums,
more than forty years after its publication. These outer resemblances
are physiognomical. The seance of to-day has lost the darker features
of its mediæval prototype, because the Present has not a real and
temporal, but only a speculative and sentimental despair, and this is
the kind that possesses chiefly the well-to-do and idle classes. It is
not difficult to meet the eye of our everyday human nature amid those
frenzied periods when whole districts seemed afflicted with epidemic
madness, and look deep in that eye to the fathomless heart of humanity.
In an old parish register of Fewston, Yorkshire, are the following
entries:--'1621. Anne, daughter of Edward Fairfax, baptized the 12th
June.' '1621. Edward Fairfax, Esq., a child named Anne, buried the
9th October.' Then in the History of Knaresborough we read of this
child, 'She was held to have died through witchcraft.' In what dreams
did that child, supposed to have been snatched away by diabolic
malice, return as a pure spirit uplifted in light, yet shadowed by
the anxiety and pain of the bereaved family! A medium is at hand,
one through whose mind and heart all the stormy electricities
of the time are playing. The most distinguished representative
of the Fairfax family is off fighting for Parliament against the
King. Edward Fairfax is a zealous Churchman. His eldest daughter,
Helen, aged twenty-one, is a parishioner of the Rev. Mr. Smithson, yet
she has come under the strong influence of a Nonconformist preacher,
Mr. Cook. The scholarly clergyman and his worldly Church on one side,
and the ignorant minister with his humble followers on the other,
are unconscious personifications of Vice and Virtue, while between
them poor Helen is no Heraklea.
Nineteen days after the burial of her little sister Anne, as mentioned
above, Helen is found 'in a deadly trance.' After a little she begins
to speak, her words showing that she is, by imagination, 'in the church
at Leeds, hearing a sermon by Mr. Cook.' On November 3, as she lies on
her bed, Helen exclaims, 'A white cat hath been long upon me and drawn
my breath, and hath left in my mouth and throat so filthy a smell that
it doth poison me!' Next we have the following in the father's diary:
'Item. Upon Wednesday, the 14th of November, she saw a black dog by her
bedside, and, after a little sleep, she had an apparition of one like
a young gentleman, very brave, his apparel all laid with gold lace,
a hat with a golden band, and a ruff in fashion. He did salute her
with the same compliment as she said Sir Fernandino Fairfax useth when
he cometh to the house and saluteth her mother.... He said he was a
Prince, and would make her Queen of England and of all the world if
she would go with him. She refused, and said, 'In the name of God,
what art thou?' He presently did forbid her to name God; to which
she replied, 'Thou art no man if thou canst not abide the name of
God; but if thou be a man, come near, let me feel of thee;' which he
would not do, but said, 'It is no matter for feeling.' She proceeded,
'If thou wert a man, thou wouldst not deny to be felt; but thou art
the devil, and art but a shadow.'
It is possible that Helen Fairfax had read in Shakspere's 'Lear,'
printed twelve years before, that
The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman;
Modo he's called, and Mahu. [169]
But the reader will remark how her vision anticipates that of Faust,
the transformation of the poodle to finely-dressed Mephistopheles. On
the next apparition a bit from Patmos is interpolated, the Devil
appearing as a beast with many horns; but the folklore of Yorkshire
prevails, and 'presently he was like a very little dog, and desired
her to open her mouth and let him come into her body, and then he
would rule all the world.' Lastly, he 'filled the room with fire.'
In the account thus far we have the following items of ancient
mythology:--1, the Cat; 2, the Dog; 3, the Pride of Life (Asmodeus),
represented in the fine dress and manners of the fiend; 4, the
Prince of this World, offering its throne; 5, the Egyptian belief
in potency of the Name; 6, the Hunger-Demon, who dares not be felt,
because his back is hollow, and, though himself a shadow, casts none;
7, the disembodied devil of the rabbins, who seeks to enter a human
form, in order to enjoy the higher powers of which man is capable;
8, the fiend of fire.
The period in which Helen Fairfax lived supplied forms for the
'materialisation' of these notions flitting from the ancient cemeteries
of theology. The gay and gallant Asmodeus had been transformed into a
goat under the ascetic eye of Europe; his mistress is a naked witch;
her familiar and slave is a cat. This is the conventionalised theologic
theory, as we find it in many examples, one of which is here shown
(Fig. 21), as copied from a stone panel at the entrance of Lyons
Cathedral. This is what Helen's visions end in. She and her younger
sister of seven years, and a young neighbour, a girl of twelve, who
have become infected with Helen's hysterics, identify six poor women
as witches, and Edward Fairfax would have secured their execution
had it not been for the clergyman Smithson.
Cats played a large part in this as in other witch-trials. They
had long been regarded as an insurance of humble households. In
many regions still may be found beliefs that a three-coloured cat
protects against fire; a black cat cures epilepsy, protects gardens;
and in Bohemia a cat is the favourite bridal gift to procure a happy
wedded life. One who kills a cat has no luck for seven years. The
Yorkshire women called witches remembered these proverbs to their
cost. Among the cats regarded by the Fairfaxes as familiars of the
accused, some names are notable. One is called 'Gibbe.' This is the
Icelandic gabba, to 'delude,' and our gibber; it is the 'Gib' cat of
Reinicke Fuchs, and of the 'Romaunt of the Rose.' In 'Gammer Gurton'
we read, 'Hath no man gelded Gyb, her cat;' and in Henry IV. i. 2,
'I am as melancholy as a gib cat.' Another of the cats is called
Inges. That is, ignis, fire--Agni maintaining his reign of terror.
Helen's devil hates the dissenter, and says, 'Cook is a lying villain,'
because Cook exorcises him with a psalm. On the other hand, the
devil praises the clergyman, but Helen breaks out with 'He is not
worthy to be a vicar who will bear with witches.' Amid the religious
controversies then exciting all households, mourning for his dead
child, humiliated by the suspicions of his best neighbours that
his daughter was guilty of deception, Edward Fairfax, Gentleman,
a scholar and author, lent an ear to the vulgar superstitions of
his neighbourhood. Could he have stood on the shoulders of Grimm,
he would have left us a very different narrative than that preserved
by the Philobiblion Society. [170]
It is hardly possible to determine now the value of the alleged
confessions of witches. They were extorted by torture or by promises
of clemency (the latter rarely fulfilled); they were shaped by
cross-examiners rather than by their victims; and their worth is still
more impaired where, as is usual, they are not given in detail, but
recorded in 'substance,' the phraseology in such case reflecting the
priest's preconceived theory of witches and their orgies. It is to be
feared, for instance, that 'devil' is often written instead of some
name that might now be interesting. Nevertheless, there seems to be
ground for believing that in many cases there were seances held to
invoke supernatural powers.
Among the vast number of trials and confessions, I have found none
more significant than the following. In February 1691 a daughter
and niece of Mr. Parris, minister in Salem (Massachusetts), girls of
ten or eleven years, and several other girls, complained of various
bodily torments, and as the physicians could find no cause for them,
they were pronounced bewitched. The Rev. Mr. Parris had once been
in business at the Barbadoes, and probably brought thence his two
slaves, Spanish Indians, man and wife. When the children were declared
bewitched, the Indian woman, Tituba, tried an experiment, probably with
fetishes familiar in the Barbadoes, to find out the witch. Whereupon
the children cried out against the Indian woman as appearing to them
and tormenting them. Tituba said her mistress, in her own country,
had taught her how to find out a witch, but denied being one herself;
but afterwards (urged, as she subsequently declared, by her master)
she confessed; and the marks of Spanish cruelty on her body were
assumed to be the Devil's wounds. The Rev. Mr. Parris in a calmer time
might have vindicated poor Tituba by taking for text of his sermon on
the subject Christ's saying about a house divided against itself, and
reminding the colony, which held public fast against Satan, that the
devil was too clever to cover his Salem agent with wounds; but instead
of that he preached on the words, 'Have I not chosen you twelve, and
one of you is a devil.' During this sermon a woman left the church;
she was sister of a woman who had also been accused by the children,
and, being offended by something Mr. Parris said, went out of meeting;
of course, also to prison. There were three other women involved with
Tituba, in whose fetish experiments a well-informed writer thinks the
Salem delusion began. [171] The examination before the Deputy-Governor
(Danforth) began at Salem, April 11, 1692, and there are several
notable points in it. Tituba's husband, the Indian John, cunningly
escaped by pretending to be one of the afflicted. He charged Goody
Proctor, and said, 'She brought the book to me.' No one asked what
book! Abigail Williams, also one of the accusers of Goody, was asked,
'Does she bring the book to you? A. Yes. Q. What would she have you do
with it? A. To write in it, and I shall be well.' Not a descriptive
word is demanded or given concerning this book. The examiners are
evidently well acquainted with it. In the alleged confessions preserved
in official reports, but not in the words of the accused, the nature
of the book is made clear. Thus Mary Osgood 'confesses that about
eleven years ago, when she was in a melancholy state and condition,
she used to walk abroad in her orchard, and, upon a certain time she
saw the appearance of a cat at the end of the house, which yet she
thought was a real cat. However, at that time it diverted her from
praying to God, and instead thereof she prayed to the Devil; about
which time she made a covenant with the Devil, who, as a black man,
came to her, and presented her a book, upon which she laid her finger,
and that left a red spot. And that upon her signing that book, the
devil told her that he was her god.' This is not unlikely to be a
paraphrase of some sermon on the infernal Book of Satan corresponding
to the Book of Life, the theory being too conventional for the court
to inquire about the mysterious volume. Equally well known was the
Antichrist theory which had long represented that avatar of Satan
as having organised a church. Thus we read:--'Abigail Williams,
did you see a company at Mr. Parris's house eat and drink? A. Yes,
sir; that was their sacrament. Q. What was it? A. They said it was
our blood.' 'Mary Walcot, have you seen a white man? A. Yes, sir,
a great many times. Q. What sort of man was he? A. A fine grave man,
and when he came he made all the witches to tremble.' When it is
remembered that Mary Osgood had described the Devil as 'a black man'
(all were thinking of the Indians), this Antiblackman suggests Christ
resisting Antichrist. Again, although nothing seems to have been said
in the court previously about baptism, one of the examiners asks 'Goody
Laccy how many years ago since they were baptized? A. Three or four
years ago I suppose. Q. Who baptized them? A. The old serpent. Q. How
did he do it? A. He dipped their heads in the water, saying they
were his, and that he had power over them; ... there were six (who)
baptized. Q. Name them. A. I think they were of the higher powers.'
There are interspersed through the proceedings suggestions of mercy on
condition of confession, which, joined to these theoretical questions,
render it plain that the retractations which the so-called witches
made were true, and that in New England, at least, there was little
if any basis for the delusion beyond the experiment of the two Spanish
Indians. The terrible massacre of witches which occurred there was the
result of the decision of English judges and divines that witchcraft
is recognised in the Bible, and there assigned the death-penalty.
It will be observed here that ancient mythology to Salem is chiefly
that of the Bible, modified by local conditions. White man and black
man represent Christ and Antichrist, and we have the same symbols on
both sides,--eucharists, baptisms, and names written in books. The
survivals from European folklore met with in the New England trials
are--the cat, the horse (rarely), and the dog. In one case a dog
suffered from the repute of being a witch, insomuch that some who
met him fell into fits; he was put to death. Riding through the air
continues, but the American witches ride upon a stick or pole. The
old-fashioned broom, the cloud-symbol of the Wild Huntsman, is
rarely mentioned. One thing, however, survives from England, at
least; the same sharp controversy that is reflected in the Fairfax
case. Cotton Mather tried one of the possessed with the Bible, the
'Assembly's Catechism,' his grandfather's 'Milk for Babes,' his
father's 'Remarkable Providence,' and a book to prove there were
witches. 'And when any of those were offered for her to read in,
she would be struck dead and fall into convulsions.' But when he
tried her with Popish and Quaker books, the English Prayer-Book,
and a book to prove there were no witches, the devil permitted her
to read these as long as she pleased. One is at a loss which most to
admire, the astuteness of the accused witch in bearing testimony to
the Puritan religion, or the phenomenon of its eminent representative
seeking a witness to it in the Father of lies.
If now we travel towards the East we find the survivals growing
clearer, as in the West they become faint.
In 1669 the people of the villages of Mohra and Elfdale in Sweden,
believing that they were troubled by witches, were visited by a royal
commission, the result of whose investigations was the execution of
twenty-three adults and fifteen children; running of the gauntlet by
thirty-six between the ages of nine and sixteen years; the lashing
on the hand of twenty children for three Sundays at the church-door,
and similar lashing of the aforesaid thirty-six once a week for a
year. Portions of the confessions of the witches are given below
from the Public Register as translated by Anthony Horneck, D.D.,
and printed in London, anno 1700. I add a few words in brackets to
point out survivals.
'We of the province of Elfdale do confess that we used to go to a
gravel-pit which lay hard by a cross-way (Hecate), and there we put
on a vest (Wolf-girdle) over our heads, and then danced round, and
after this ran to the cross-way, and called the Devil thrice, first
with a still voice, the second time somewhat louder, and the third
time very loud, with these words--Antecessor, come and carry us to
Blockula. Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in different
habits; but for the most part we saw him in a grey coat and red and
blue stockings: he had a red beard (Barbarossa), a high-crowned hat
(Turn-cap), with linen of divers colours wrapt about it, and long
garters upon his stockings.
'Then he asked us whether we would serve him with soul and body. If we
were content to do so, he set us upon a beast which he had there ready,
and carried us over churches and high walls; and after all we came
to a green meadow where Blockula lies. We must procure some scrapings
of altars, and filings of church clocks; and then he gives us a horn
with a salve in it, wherewith we do anoint ourselves (chrism); and a
saddle with a hammer (Thor's), and a wooden nail, thereby to fix the
saddle (Walkyr's); whereupon we call upon the Devil and away we go.'
'For their journey, they said they made use of all sorts of
instruments, of beasts, of men, of spits, and posts, according as they
had opportunity: if they do ride upon goats (Azazel) and have many
children with them, that all may have room, they stick a spit into
the backside of the Goat, and then are anointed with the aforesaid
ointment. What the manner of their journey is, God only knows. Thus
much was made out, that if the children did at any time name the
names (Egyptian spells) of those that had carried them away, they
were again carried by force either to Blockula, or to the cross-way,
and there miserably beaten, insomuch that some of them died of it.'
'A little girl of Elfdale confessed that, naming the name of Jesus
as she was carried away, she fell suddenly upon the ground, and got
a great hole in her side, which the Devil presently healed up again,
and away he carried her; and to this day the girl confessed she had
exceeding great pain in her side.'
'They unanimously confessed that Blockula is situated in a delicate
large meadow, whereof you can see no end. The place or house they
met at had before it a gate painted with divers colours; through
this gate they went into a little meadow distinct from the other,
where the beasts went that they used to ride on; but the men whom
they made use of in their journey stood in the house by the gate in a
slumbering posture, sleeping against the wall (castle of Waldemar). In
a huge large room of this house, they said, there stood a very long
table, at which the witches did sit down; and that hard by this
room was another chamber where there were very lovely and delicate
beds. The first thing they must do at Blockula was, that they must
deny all, and devote themselves body and soul to the Devil, and
promise to serve him faithfully, and confirm all this with an oath
(initiation). Hereupon they cut their fingers (Odinism), and with
their blood write their name in his book (Revelations). They added
that he caused them to be baptized, too, by such priests as he had
there (Antichrist's Sacraments).'
'And he, the Devil, bids them believe that the day of judgment will
come speedily, and therefore sets them on work to build a great house
of stone (Babel), promising that in that house he will preserve them
from God's fury, and cause them to enjoy the greatest delights and
pleasures (Moslem). But while they work exceeding hard at it, there
falls a great part of the wall down again.'
'They said, they had seen sometimes a very great Devil like a Dragon,
with fire round about him, and bound with an iron chain (Apocalyptic),
and the Devil that converses with them tells them that if they confess
anything he will let that great Devil loose upon them, whereby all
Sweedeland shall come into great danger.
'They added that the Devil had a church there, such another as in
the town of Mohra. When the Commissioners were coming he told the
Witches they should not fear them; for he would certainly kill them
all. And they confessed that some of them had attempted to murther
the Commissioners, but had not been able to effect it.
'Some of the children talked much of a white Angel (Frigga as christian
tutelary), which used to forbid them what the Devil had bid them do,
and told them that those doings should not last long. What had been
done had been permitted because of the wickedness of the people.
'Those of Elfdale confessed that the Devil used to play upon an
harp before them (Tannhauser), and afterwards to go with them that
he liked best into a chamber, when he committed venerous acts with
them (Asmodeus); and this indeed all confessed, that he had carnal
knowledge of them, and that the Devil had sons and daughters by them,
which he did marry together, and they ... brought forth toads and
serpents (Echidna).
'After this they sat down to table, and those that the Devil esteemed
most were placed nearest to him; but the children must stand at the
door, where he himself gives them meat and drink (Sacrament). After
meals they went to dancing, and in the meanwhile swore and cursed
most dreadfully, and afterwards went to fighting one with another
(Valhalla).
'They also confessed that the Devil gives them a beast about the
bigness and shape of a young cat (Hecate), which they call a carrier;
and that he gives them a bird as big as a raven (Odin's messenger),
but white; [172] and these two creatures they can send anywhere, and
wherever they come they take away all sorts of victuals they can get,
butter, cheese, milk, bacon, and all sorts of seeds, whatever they
find, and carry it to the witch. What the bird brings they may keep
for themselves, but what the carrier brings they must reserve for the
Devil, and that is brought to Blockula, where he doth give them of it
so much as he thinks fit. They added likewise that these carriers fill
themselves so full sometimes, that they are forced to spue ('Odin's
booty') by the way, which spuing is found in several gardens, where
colworts grow, and not far from the houses of these witches. It is
of a yellow colour like gold, and is called butter of witches.
'The Lords Commissioners were indeed very earnest, and took great pains
to persuade them to show some of their tricks, but to no purpose;
for they did all unanimously confess that since they had confessed
all, they found that all their witchcraft was gone, and that the
Devil at this time appeared to them very terrible, with claws on
his hands and feet, and with horns on his head, a long tail behind,
and showed to them a pit burning, with a hand put out; but the Devil
did thrust the person down again with an iron fork; and suggested to
the witches that if they continued in their confession, he would deal
with them in the same manner.'
The ministers of both Elfdale and Mohra were the chief inciters of
this investigation, and both testified that they had suffered many
tortures in the night from the witches. One was taken by the throat
and so violently used that 'for some weeks he was not able to speak
or perform divine service.'
We have in this narrative the official and clerical statement, and can
never know to what the victims really confessed. Blockula seems to be
a Swedish edition of Blocksberg, of old considered a great resort of
witches. But we may especially note the epithet by which the witches
are said to have first appealed to the Devil--Antecessor. Dr. Horneck
has not given us the Swedish term of which this is a translation,
but we may feel assured that it was not a phrase coined by the class
among whom reputed witches were found. In all probability it was a
learned phrase of the time for some supposed power which preceded
and was conquered by Christianity; and if we knew its significance it
might supply a clue to the reality with which the Commissioners were
dealing. There would seem to be strong probabilities that in Sweden
also, as elsewhere, there had been a revival of faith in the old
religion whose barbaric rites had still survived in a few holes and
corners where they were practised by night. The Antecessor was still
present to hold out promises where the Successor had broken all that
his sponsors had made when the populace accepted his baptism. This
probability is further suggested by the fact that some of these
uncanny events happened at Elfdale, a name which hints at a region of
especial sanctity under the old religion, and also by the statement
that the Devil had a church there, a sort of travesty of the village
church. About the same time we find John Fiene confessing in Scotland
that the Devil appeared to him in 'white raiment,' and it is also
testified that John heard 'the Devil preach in a kirk in the pulpit
in the night by candlelight, the candle burning blue.' [173]
The names used by the Scotch witches are often suggestive of
pagan survivals. Thus in the trial at the Paisley Assizes, 1678,
concerning the alleged bewitching of Sir George Maxwell, Margaret
Jackson testified to giving up her soul by renouncing her baptism to
a devil named Locas (Loki?); another raised a tempest to impede the
king's voyage to Denmark by casting into the sea a cat, and crying
Hola (Hela?); and Agnes Sampson called the Devil to her in the shape
of a dog by saying, 'Elva (Elf?), come and speak to me!'
It is necessary to pass by many of the indications contained in the
witch-trials that there had been an effort to recur to the pleasures
and powers traditionally associated with the pagan era of Europe, and
confirmed by the very denunciations of contemporary paganism with its
pomp and luxury by the priesthood. The promises held out by the 'Devil'
to Elfdale peasants and puritanised Helen Fairfax are unmistakable. But
it is necessary to remark also that the ceremonies by which, as was
clearly proved in various cases, the fortune-tellers or 'witches'
endeavoured to imitate the spells of Dr. Faustus were archæological.
Around the cauldron, which was used in imitation of the Alchemists,
a rude Zodiac was marked, some alchemic signs being added; and
in the cauldron were placed ingredients concerning many of which
the accounts are confused. It is, however, certain that the chief
ingredients were plants which, precisely as in ancient Egypt, had
been gathered at certain phases of the moon, or seasons of the year,
or from some spot where the sun was supposed not to have shone on
it. It was clearly proved also that the plants chiefly used by the
sorceresses were rue and vervain. Vervain was sacred to the god of war
in Greece and Rome, and made the badge of ambassadors sent to make
treaties of peace. In Germany it was sacred to Thor, and he would
not strike with his lightning a house protected by it. The Druids
called it 'holy herb;' they gathered it when the dog-star rose, from
unsunned spots, and compensated the earth for the deprivation with
a sacrifice of honey. Its reputation was sufficient in Ben Jonson's
day for him to write--
Bring your garlands, and with reverence place
The vervain on the altar.
The charm which vervain had for the mediæval peasant was that it
was believed, if it had first touched a Bel-fire, to snap iron; and,
if boiled with rue, made a liquid which, being poured on a gunflint,
made the shot as sure to take effect as any Freischütz could desire.
Rue was supposed to have a potent effect on the eye, and to bestow
second sight. So sacred was it once in England that missionaries
sprinkled holy water from brushes made up of it, whence it was called
'herb of grace.' Milton represents Michael as purging Adam's eyes
with it. In the Tyrol it is believed to confer fine vision and used
with agrimony (flowers of Argos, the many-eyed); in Posen it is said
also to heal serpent-bites. By this route it came into the cauldron
of the wizard and witch. In Drayton's incantation it is said--
Then sprinkles she the juice of rue,
With nine drops of the midnight dew
From lunary distilling.
This association of lunary, or moon-wort, once supposed to cure lunacy,
with rue is in harmony with the mythology of both. An old oracle,
said to have been revealed by Hecate herself, ran thus:--'From a
root of wild rue fashion and polish a statue; adorn it with household
lizards; grind myrrh, gum, and frankincense with the same reptiles,
and let the mixture stand in the air during the waning of a moon;
then address your vows in the following terms' (the formula is not
preserved). 'As many forms as I have, so many lizards let there be;
do these things exactly; you will build me an abode with branches of
laurel, and having addressed fervent prayers to the image, you will
see me in your sleep.' [174]
Rue was thus consecrated as the very substance of Hecate, the mother
of all European witches. M. Maury supposes that it was because it was
a narcotic and caused hallucinations. Hallucinations were, no doubt,
the basis of belief in second sight. But whatever may be the cause,
rue was the plant of witchcraft; and Bishop Taylor speaks of its being
used by exorcists to try the devil, and thence deriving its appellation
'herb of grace.' More probably it was used to sprinkle holy water
because of a traditional sanctity. All narcotics were supposed to be
children of the night; and if, in addition, they were able to cause
hallucinations, they were supposed to be under more especial care of
the moon.
After reading a large number of reports concerning the ordeals and
trials of witches, and also many of their alleged confessions, I have
arrived at the conclusion that there were certainly gatherings held
in secret places; that some of the ordinary ceremonies and prayers of
the Church were used, with names of traditional deities and Oriental
demons substituted for those of the Trinity and saints; that with
these were mingled some observances which had been preserved from
the ancient world by Gnostics, Astrologists, and Alchemists. That at
these gatherings there was sometimes direct devil-worship is probable,
but oftener the invocations were in other names, and it is for the
most part due to the legal reporters that the 'Devil' is so often
named. As to the 'confessions,' many, no doubt, admitted they had
gone to witches' Sabbaths who had been there only in feverish dreams,
as must have been the case of many young children and morbid pietists
who were executed; others confessed in hope of escape from charges
they could not answer; and others were weary of their lives.
The writer of this well remembers, in a small Virginian village
(Falmouth), more than thirty years ago, the terrible persecutions to
which an old white woman named Nancy Calamese was subjected because
of her reputation as a witch. Rumours of lizards vomited by her poor
neighbours caused her to be dreaded by the ignorant; the negroes
were in terror of her; she hardly dared pass through the streets
for fear of being hooted by boys. One morning she waded into the
Rappahannock river and drowned herself, and many of her neighbours
regarded the suicide as her confession. Probably it was a similar
sort of confession to many that we read in the reports of witch trials.
The retribution that followed was more ferocious than could have
visited mere attempts by the poor and ignorant to call up spirits
to their aid. Every now and then the prosecutions disclose the
well-known animus of heresy, persecution, and also the fury of
magistrates suspicious of conspiracies. In England, New England,
and France, particularly, an incipient rationalism was revealed
in the party called 'Saducees,' who tried to cast discredit on
the belief in witchcraft. This was recognised by Sir Mathew Hale
in England and Cotton Mather in New England, consequently by the
chief authorities of church and state in both countries, as an
attack on biblical infallibility, since it was said in the Bible,
'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' The leading wizards and
witches were probably also persons who had been known in connection
with the popular discontent and revolutionary feeling displayed in
so many of the vindictive conjurations which were brought to light.
The horrors which attended the crushing out of this last revival
of paganism are such as recall the Bartholomew massacre and the
recent slaughter of Communists in Paris, so vividly that one can
hardly repress the suspicion that the same sort of mingled panic and
fanaticism were represented in them all. Dr. Réville has summed up the
fearful history of three hundred years as follows:--'In the single
year 1485, and in the district of Worms alone, eighty-five witches
were delivered to the flames. At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg,
at Ratisbon, at Vienna, and in a multitude of other towns, there
were executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among other victims,
a physician was burnt alive, because he saved the life of a woman
who had been given up by the midwife. In Italy, during the year
1523, there were burnt in the diocese of Como alone more than two
hundred witches. This was after the new bull hurled at witchcraft
by Pope Adrian VI. In Spain it was still worse; there, in 1527,
two little girls, of from nine to eleven years of age, denounced a
host of witches, whom they pretended to detect by a mark in their
left eye. In England and Scotland political influence was brought to
bear upon sorcery; Mary Stuart was animated by a lively zeal against
witches. In France the Parliament of Paris happily removed business
of this kind from the ecclesiastical tribunals; and under Louis XI.,
Charles VIII., and Louis XII. there were but few condemnations for
the practice of magic; but from the time of Francis I., and especially
from Henry II., the scourge reappeared. Jean Bodin, a man of sterling
worth in other respects, but stark mad upon the question of witchcraft,
communicated his mania to all classes of the nation. His contemporary
and disciple, Boguet, showed how that France swarmed with witches and
wizards. 'They increase and multiply on the land,' said he, 'even as do
the caterpillars in our gardens. Would that they were all got together
in a heap, so that a single fire might burn them all at once.' Savoy,
Flanders, the Jura Mountains, Lorraine, Béarn, Provence, and in almost
all parts of France, the frightful hecatombs were seen ablaze. In the
seventeenth century the witch-fever somewhat abated, though it burst
out here and there, centralising itself chiefly in the convents of
hysterical nuns. The terrible histories of the priests Gaufridy and
Urban Grandier are well known. In Germany, and particularly in its
southern parts, witch-burning was still more frequent. In one small
principality at least 242 persons were burnt between 1646 and 1651;
and, horribile dictu, in the official records of these executions,
we find that among those who suffered were children from one to six
years of age! In 1657 the witch-judge, Nicholas Remy, boasted of having
burnt 900 persons in fifteen years. It would even seem that it is to
the proceedings against sorcery that Germany owes the introduction
of torture as an ordinary mode of getting at the truth. Mr. Roskoff
reproduces a catalogue of the executions of witches and wizards in
the episcopal town of Würzburg, in Bavaria, up to the year 1629. In
1659 the number of those put to death for witchcraft amounted, in
this diocese, to 900. In the neighbouring bishopric of Bamberg at
least 600 were burnt. He enumerates thirty-one executions in all,
not counting some regarded by the compilers of the catalogue as not
important enough to mention. The number of victims at each execution
varies from two to seven. Many are distinguished by such surnames
as 'The Big Hunchback, The Sweetheart, The Bridge-keeper, The Old
Pork-woman,' &c. Among them appear people of all sorts and conditions,
actors, workmen, jugglers, town and village maidens, rich burghers,
nobles, students, magistrates even, and a fair number of priests. Many
are simply entered as 'a foreigner.' Here and there is added to the
name of the condemned person his age and a short notice. Among the
victims, for instance, of the twentieth execution figures 'Little
Barbara, the prettiest girl in Würzburg;' 'a student who could speak
all manner of languages, who was an excellent musician, vocaliter et
instrumentaliter;' 'the master of the hospice, a very learned man.' We
find, too, in this, gloomy account the cruel record of children burnt
for witchcraft; here a little girl of about nine or ten years of age,
with her baby sister, younger than herself (their mother was burnt a
little while afterwards); here boys of ten or eleven; again, a young
girl of fifteen; two children from the poorhouse; the little boy of
a councillor. The pen falls from one's hand in recapitulating such
monstrosities. Cannot those who would endow Catholicity with the
dogma of papal infallibility hearken, before giving their vote,
to the cries that rise before God, and which history re-echoes,
of those poor innocent ones whom pontifical bulls threw into
flames? The seventeenth century saw the rapid diminution of trials
and tortures. In one of his good moments, Louis XIV. mitigated greatly
the severity of this special legislation. For this he had to undergo
the remonstrances of the Parliament of Rouen, which believed society
would be ruined if those who dealt in sorcery were merely condemned to
perpetual confinement. The truth is, that belief in witchcraft was so
wide-spread, that from time to time even throughout the seventeenth
century there were isolated executions. One of the latest and most
notorious was that of Renata Saenger, superior of the convent of
Unterzell, near Würzburg (1748). At Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756,
a young girl of thirteen years was convicted of impure intercourse
with the Devil, and put to death. Seville in 1781, and Glaris in 1783,
saw the last two known victims to this fatal superstition.' [175]
The Reformation swept away in Northern countries, for the upper
classes, as many Christian saints and angels as priestcraft had
previously turned to enemies for the lower. The poor and ignorant
simply tried to evoke the same ideal spirit-guardians under the
pagan forms legendarily associated with a golden age. Witchcraft
was a pathetic appeal against a cruel present to a fair, however
visionary, past. But Protestantism has brought on famine of another
kind--famine of the heart. The saints of the Church have followed those
of paganism; and although one result of the process has been a vast
increase in enterprise, science, and wealth, man cannot live by these
alone. Modern spiritualism, which so many treat with a superciliousness
little creditable to a scientific age, is a cry of starved sentiment
and affections left hopeless under faded heavens, as full of pathetic
meaning as that which was wrung from serfs enticed into temples only
to find them dens of thieves. Desolate hearts take up the burthen
of desolate homes, and appeal to invisible powers for guidance;
and for attestation of hopes which science has blighted, ere poetry,
art, and philanthropy have changed these ashes into beauty. Because
these so-called spirits, evoked by mediums out of morbid nerves,
are really longed-for ideals, the darker features of witchcraft are
not called about them. That fearful movement was a wronged Medea
whose sorrows had made Hecate--to remember the dreadful phrase of
Euripides--'the chosen assistant dwelling in the inmost recesses of
her house.' Modern spiritualism is Rachel weeping for her children,
not to be comforted if they are not. But the madness of the one is
to be understood by the plaintive appeal of the other.