Demonology and Devil-lore Part 39

In Stockholm I saw the so-called Devil's Bible, the biggest book in the world, in the Royal Library. It is literally as they describe it, 'gigas librorum': no single man can lift it from the floor. It was part of the booty carried off by the Swedes after the surrender of Prague, A.D. 1648. It contains three hundred parchment leaves, each one made of an a.s.s's hide, the cover being of oak planks, 1 1/2 inches thick. It contains the Old and New Testaments; Josephi Flavii Antiquitates Judaicae; Isidori Episcopi L. XX. de diversis materiis; Confessio peccatorum; and some other works. The last-named production is written on black and dark brown ground with red and yellow letters. Here and there sentences are marked 'haec sunt suspecta,' 'superst.i.tiosa,'

'prohibita.' One MS., which is headed, 'Experimentum de furto et febribus', is a treatise in Monkish Latin on the exorcism of ghosts and evil spirits, charms against thieves and sickness, and various prescriptions in 'White Magic.' The age of the book is considerably over three hundred years. The autograph of a German emperor is in it: 'Ferdinandus Imperator Romanorum, A.D. 1577.' The volume is known in Sweden as Fan's Bibel (Devil's Bible). The legend says, that a monk, suspected of black arts, who had been condemned to death, begged for life, and his judge mockingly told him that he would be pardoned only if he should produce next morning all the books here found and in this vast size. The monk invoked the Devil's a.s.sistance, and the ponderous volume was written in a single night. This Devil must have been one who prided himself more on his literary powers than his personal appearance; for the face and form said to be his portrait, frontispiece of the volume, represent a most hideous ape, green and hairy, with horrible curled tusks. It is, no doubt, the ape Anerhahn of the Wagner legends; Burns's 'towzie tyke, black, grim, and large.' [152]

I noticed particularly in this old work the recurrence of deep red letters and sentences similar to the ink which Fust used at the close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place and date of printing. Now Red is sacred in one direction as symbolising the blood of Christ, but it is also the colour of Judas, who betrayed that blood. Hence, while red letters might denote sacred days and sentences in priestly calendars, they might be supposed mimicry of such sanct.i.ties by 'G.o.d's Ape' if occurring in secular works or books of magic. It is said that these red letters were especially noted in Paris as indications of the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by Fust; and, though it is uncertain whether he suffered imprisonment, the red lines with his name appear to have been regarded as his signature in blood.

For a long time every successive discovery of science, every invention of material benefit to man, was believed by priest-ridden peoples to have been secured by compact with the devil. The fate of the artist Prometheus, fettered by jealous Jove, was repeated in each who aspired to bring light to man, and some men of genius--such as Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus--appear to have been frightened away from legitimate scientific research by the first connection of their names with sorcery. They had before them the example of the greatest scientific man of the Middle Ages, Roger Bacon, and knew how easily, in the priestly whisper, the chemist's crucible grew to a wizard's cauldron. The time may come when Oxford University will have learned enough to build a true memorial of the grandest man who ever wrote and taught within its walls. It would show Roger Bacon--rectifier of the Julian Calendar, a.n.a.lyst of lenses, inventor of spectacles and achromatic lenses, probable constructor of the first telescope, demonstrator of the chemical action of air in combustion, inventor of the mode of purifying saltpetre and crystallising it into gunpowder, antic.i.p.ator of the philosophical method with which his namesake is credited--looking on a pile of his books for whose researches he had paid two thousand French livres, to say nothing of a life's labour, only to see them condemned by his University, their circulation prohibited; and his sad gaze might be from the prison to which the Council of Franciscans at Paris sentenced him whom Oxford gladly delivered into their hands. He was condemned, says their historian Wadding, 'propter novitates quasdam suspectas.' The suspected novelties were crucibles, retorts, and lenses that made the stars look larger. So was it with the Oxford six hundred years ago. Undeniably some progress had been made even in the last generation, for Sh.e.l.ley was only forbidden to study chemistry, and expelled for his metaphysics. But now that it is claimed that Oxford is no longer partaker with them that stoned investigators and thinkers from Bacon to Sh.e.l.ley, it would be in order to build for its own great martyr of science a memorial, that superst.i.tion may look on one whom it has pierced.

Referring to Luther's inkstand thrown at the Devil, Dr. Zerffii, in his lecture on the Devil, says, 'He (the devil) hates nothing so much as writing or printer's ink.' But the truth of this remark depends upon which of two devils be considered. It would hardly apply to the Serpent who recommended the fruit of knowledge, or to the University man in Lucas van Leyden's picture (Fig. 6). But if we suppose the Devil of Luther's Bible (Fig. 17) to be the one at which the inkstand was thrown, the criticism is correct. The two pictures mentioned may be instructively compared. Luther's Devil is the reply of the University to the Church. These are the two devils--the priest and the scholar--who glared at each other in the early sixteenth century. 'The Devil smelled the roast,' says Luther, 'that if the languages revived, his kingdom would get a hole which he could not easily stop again.' And it must be admitted that some of the monkish execrations of the time, indeed of many times since, have an undertone of Jahvistic jealousy. 'These Knowers will become as one of us.' It must also be admitted that the clerical instinct told true: the University man held in him that sceptical devil who is always the destroyer of the priest's paradise. These two devils which struggled with each other through the sixteenth century still wage their war in the arena of Protestantism. Many a Lutheran now living may remember to have smiled when Hofmann's experiments in discovering carbonic acid gas gained him repute for raising again Mephosto; but perhaps they did not recognise Luther's devil when, at the annual a.s.sembly of Lutheran Pastors in Berlin (Sept. 1877), he reappeared as the Rev. Professor Grau, and said, 'Not a few listen to those striving to combine Christ with Belial, to reconcile redeeming truth with modern science and culture.' But though they who take the name of Luther in vain may thus join hands with the Devil, at whom the Reformer threw his inkstand, the combat will still go on, and the University Belial do the brave work of Bel till beneath his feet lies the dragon of Darkness whether disguised as Pope or Protestant.

If the Church wishes to know precisely how far the roughness pardonable in the past survives unpardonably in itself, let its clergy peruse carefully the following translation by Mr. Leland of a poem by Heine; and realise that the Devil portrayed in it is, by grace of its own prelates, at present the most admired personage in every Court and fashionable drawing-room in Christendom.

I called the Devil, and he came: In blank amaze his form I scan.

He is not ugly, is not lame, But a refined, accomplished man,-- One in the very prime of life, At home in every cabinet strife, Who, as diplomatist, can tell Church and State news extremely well.

He is somewhat pale--and no wonder either, Since he studies Sanskrit and Hegel together.

His favourite poet is still Fonque.

Of criticism he makes no mention, Since all such matters unworthy attention He leaves to his grandmother, Hecate.

He praised my legal efforts, and said That he also when younger some law had read, Remarking that friendship like mine would be An acquisition, and bowed to me,-- Then asked if we had not met before, At the Spanish Minister's soiree?

And, as I scanned his face once more, I found I had known him for many a day.

CHAPTER XXIV.

WITCHCRAFT.

Minor G.o.ds--Saint and Satyr--Tutelaries--Spells--Early Christianity and the poor--Its doctrine as to pagan deities--Mediaeval 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-hammphorasch--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 Hecate--Factors of Witch persecution--Three centuries of ma.s.sacre--Wurzburg 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 aegean sea were heard lamentations and the voice, 'Great Pan is dead!' Augustus consults the oracle of Apollo and receives reply--

Me puer Hebraeus, Divos Deus ipse gubernans, Cedere sede jubet, tristremque redire sub orc.u.m; Aris ergo dehinc tacitis abscedito nostris.

But while the rage of these Fathers towards all the great G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, who in their grand temples represented 'the pride of life,'

was remorseless, they were comparatively indifferent to the belief or disbelief of the lower cla.s.ses 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.ds!'

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 Apotropaei.

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sailed 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 ma.s.s 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 acc.u.mulated superst.i.tions 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 subst.i.tute patron-saints and guardian-angels of its own for the pagan genii, turned the latter from friends to enemies, and their protecting into a.s.sailing weapons.

All the hereditary household G.o.ds of what is now called Christendom were diabolised. But in order that the ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses. 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 a.s.sailed when the first ma.s.s 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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l, 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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sociated with Satan. Many conquered obstructions had rendered the Demons which represented them ridiculous. Hence the 'Dummeteufel' of so many German fables and of the mediaeval 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 Muller, '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 mediaeval Missal now in possession of Sir Joseph Hooker is illuminated. It could not be expected that the ma.s.ses 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 Ha.r.s.enet, '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 l.u.s.tily a horn to alarm his comrades, and crying, 'Out, out, aronzt!' to the invader. He fights with a three-p.r.o.nged 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 p.r.i.c.k 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 G.o.ds 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 appet.i.te. 'When I am at dinner, and the devil has taken away my appet.i.te, 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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses 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 G.o.d' 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. 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 l.u.s.tres 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 G.o.d;' 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 a.s.sistance 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 (Samael) 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 s.e.x 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 ma.n.u.script 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 G.o.ds fled before the t.i.tans, 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 a.s.sociation of myths. For Lilith was forerunner of the mediaeval mothers weeping for their children; her voice of perpetual lamentation at the cruel fate allotted her by the combined tyranny of G.o.d 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 a.s.sociation with the cat, beneath whose soft sparkling fur the G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ds 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 acc.u.mulation of a.s.syrian and Egyptian lore which was re-edited in the form of Neoplatonicism. This mongrel ma.s.s, const.i.tuted 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 G.o.d 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, Kemi 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 G.o.d'

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-hammphorasch, or real name of G.o.d--Solomon was able to chain Professor Asmodeus, and wrest from him the secret of the worm Schamir, 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-hammphorasch, 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 Maeragenes, who speaks of him as a philosopher and magician, who repeatedly exercised his powers on philosophers. Arn.o.bius 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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, h.e.l.l might be preferable after all.

Dr. Wuttke, while writing his recent work on German superst.i.tions, 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 pa.s.sed the lower grade of such a school, but, scared by the horrid ceremonies, had p.r.o.nounced some holy words which destroyed the effect of the wicked practices, and struck the a.s.sembled Devil-worshippers with consternation. The boy said he had barely escaped with his life. I have myself pa.s.sed an evening at a school in London 'for the development of Spirit-mediums,'